


the little-death

by crystalsexarch



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Ambiguous Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Angst, Canonical Character Death, Domestic Fluff, F/F, F/M, Female Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Masturbation, Other, Sexual Tension, Tumblr: FFXIVwrite2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-10-11 22:24:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 31
Words: 22,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20553647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crystalsexarch/pseuds/crystalsexarch
Summary: "Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration."A series of prompts fromthe 2019 FFXIV Writing Challenge.Table of contents so you can pick your poison. And there's lots of poison.Highlights include lots of Haurchefant-posting in 2k19, Crystal Exarch, some good ole fashioned femslash, and more. Overarching theme of, you know, just - pain. Fear. Suffering. Like 2019 in general.





	1. table of contents

I have a feeling this is going to get ugly real quick, so let's get ahead of this.

FFXIV Write 2019 as articulated [here](https://sea-wolf-coast-to-coast.tumblr.com/post/187546672817/ffxivwrite2019) via Tumblr's sea-wolf-coast-to-coast.

**One - voracious**  
Haurchefant. **Explicit**. Female WoL, nameless, faceless. Post-Heavensward. Coping with loss. Voraciously. A bit shamefully.

**Two - bargain**  
Haurchefant-centric, but he doesn't appear. **T for teen**. Second-person ambiguous WoL. Your buddy Thancred's there. Short and angsty. Alcohol.

**Three - lost**  
Crystal Exarch. **Explicit? Mature?** Not sure. Ambiguous WoL. You're definitely fucking around. Exarch gets lost in his own pleasure.

**Four - shifting blame**  
Aymeric. Oh, Aymeric. Foolish Aymeric, calling for the Eyes of Nidhogg to be cast into the abyss. This time, you'll let him have it. **General**. Ambiguous WoL.

**Five - vault**  
G'raha Tia. Developing relationship? Real Crystal Tower hours. Cid is here. **General**, don't get _too_ excited. Ambiguous, brooding WoL.

**Six - first steps**  
Haurchefant. **Teen**. Big pain energy. First-person ambiguous WoL. Post-Vault. All is not well with the Warrior of Light.

**Seven - forgiven **  
Ambiguous WoL says goodbye to their adoptive (lesbian) mom before heading off to the First. Featuring an OC Miqo'te that belong to comrades. Wholesome. **General**.

**Eight - free day**  
Estinien. Female Dragoon WoL. A training exercise that ends (begins?) with some mild sexual tension. I think it's safe to call it **t for teen** because nothing graphic happens, really...but let me know if I'm wrong. Might expand later.

**Nine - hesitate**  
Zenos. Ambiguous WoL is haunted by past encounters with this monster of a man. **T for teen**. It's short.

**Ten - foster**  
Haurchefant-posting again. Naked cuddling, but probably **t for teen**. Ambiguous WoL begins to feel like part of the Fortemps family. Angst and fluff?

**Eleven - snuff**  
Let's put Thordan down. From his perspective. Short. **T for teen**, I'm not sure. Dude's dying.

**Twelve - fingers crossed**  
WoL and Lucia. **Explicit**. Aymeric's second-in-command catches you making a particular purchase and wants you to demonstrate. Femslash.

**Thirteen - wax**  
WoLxExarch light. Implied? Haurchefant also implied. A letter written by WoL. Universe wherein WoL does not make it tothe end of ShB and the Exarch survives. Don't think too hard. **General**.

**Fourteen - scour**  
Haurchefant. WoL female and smaller than he but ambiguous otherwise. **Mature**. Haurchefant helps WoL get a good knight's sleep however he can.

**Fifteen - free day**  
1100+ more words of Haurchefant pain. Female Au Ra WoL, nameless. Mid-Stormblood, she considers her heritage and how well her lover took to it. **Mature.**

**Sixteen - jitters**  
Haurchefant. **Explicit**. Great gods. Ambigious WoL. You lose your virginity to a beautiful elf man. Or do you?

**Seventeen - obeisant**  
Haurchefant. Continued from "jitter." Both are **explicit**. You, ambiguous WoL, lose your virginity to an Elezen of note. _God I wish that were me_.

**Eighteen - wilt**  
Possible Consequences for a Warrior of Light Upon Besting the Prince of Doma in Martial Combat...or Upon Letting Him Win.  
Many ambiguous WoLs. Hien, obviously. **Teen** and a bit goofy, a bit sad. Based on WoLs of my friends and I, upon the suggestion of writing something about Doma's ruler.

**Nineteen - radiant**  
Crystal Exarch. **Explicit? Mature?** He finds himself aroused by some of ambiguous WoL's qualities...and not the traditional ones...

** Twenty - bisect**  
Something short and sad about G'raha Tia. **General**. About hiding his identity.

**Twenty-one - crunch**  
Haaaaa...Aymeric. **Explicit**. There's one thing ambiguous female WoL and the Lord Commander _must_ get done before heading into battle.

**Twenty-two**  
Okay so I ran out of time to do what I wanted and...now you get to enter the private quarters of Sadu. **Mature**. Ambiguous (shy) WoL.

**Twenty-three - parched**  
Ambiguous WoL regrets having said some harsh words to Thancred. Strongly implied past WoLxHaurchefant. Alcohol is involved. Continued from prompt two - bargain. **Teen**.

**Twenty-four - unctuous**  
Haurchefant-light. Injured ambiguous WoL learns the master of Camp Dragonhead apparently cares for them a great deal. **General**.

**Twenty-five - trust**  
Two short pieces featuring Estinien and Haurchefant (though not at the same time...yet). Both are **mature**. Light bondage/choking...erm...more is planned here...

**Twenty-six - slosh**  
Crystal Exarch. **Mature**. I'm going to extend this I just ran out of time!!! Bath scene after ambiguous female WoL comes home from the Empty.

**Twenty-seven - palaver**  
Haurchefant gets away from the palaver of running Camp Dragonhead so he can let off some steam before ambiguous female WoL gets back. **Explicit** if you can't take a hint. He imagines some fantasies, light bondage, and erm...some other things...

**Twenty-eight - attune**  
Specific female Auri WoL plus some Miqo'te OCs. Very wholesome. Childhood. First attunement. **General**.

**Twenty-nine - free day**  
Crystal Exarch. This became **explicit**, but it's really about pain and character growth. Ambiguous female WoL wakes to find her partner already up and troubled by the nature of his own survival.

**T-t-thirty - darkness**  
Haurchefant has a conversation with the Warrior of Darkness. It's very one-sided.


	2. table of contents

A dead man couldn’t touch her.

Couldn’t hold her.

Couldn’t rub her shoulders when she lay awake at night. Couldn’t hum lullabies into the back of her neck.

Couldn’t cook for her when she was too tired to do it herself.

And he certainly couldn’t fuck her.

She stared at her bed at the Forgotten Knight, like she expected a snake to slither from the sheets. For weeks, months perhaps, she had lingered there in limbo. Close enough to immerse herself in the sights and sounds of their lost relationship - but far enough away that she rarely saw his brothers.

Or, gods forbid, his _father_. She could hardly look the Count in the eye.

If she went through with her plan, double that.

The night was young, but she wore only her smallclothes, far too little for Coerthas, even with the heat of the fire not far from her back. The weather suited pairs, not lone adventurers. Even the thick and starchy blankets stung of cold against her skin now that she slept alone.

She went through the motions of preparing for slumber - checking the door, snuffing the lantern, tucking herself in - and once she found herself shivering in bed, she stared into the rings of the wooden ceiling.

“That one looks like a bird,” he had once said, pointing. “That there - do you see it?”

It was the only night he had joined her at the inn instead of welcoming her to his quarters. Both of them had been too drunk to walk the streets of Ishgard and rise with any sense of dignity in the morning. Of course, half the night they fucked like animals, struggling to make each other come only because they kept stumbling - getting stuck - bumping bone against bone and laughing like hags. Any time orgasm seemed _remotely_ possible one of them started laughing.

“I can’t take you seriously with a face like that! Your lips, contorted so!”

She couldn’t laugh quite yet. But she had stopped crying.

Never would she stop wanting him. Never. Not if she lived to love a thousand more.

In darkness, she rolled onto her stomach and closed her eyes, remembering the eccentric language of his affection. She let her hands trail through places he had touched and kissed, let her nails become his careful teeth, pressuring just enough to excite, never enough to shake. Calling up those feelings came with shame, but her desire had grown too thick and unwieldy.

This first time, it was a rite of passage.

She tested herself through her smallclothes.

He used to do the same, no matter how voracious she had been in stripping herself or him. He’d push gently through the fabric and ask each time - _is this all right?_ Or sometimes - _might I have the pleasure?_

Half the time she’d rear up and mock-slap him. “I’ll have your ears if you don’t have me now!”

She let herself in and hitched one leg up by her side.

She couldn’t believe she was doing this. Using the name, the image, the actions of a dead man to fuel her wanting. Still, her fingers danced.

He was one of those men who could make love in a hundred different ways - not positions, but in manners. He could take her from behind while smiling like a devil into her hair. He could fuck her with such deliberate slowness that she thought she’d melt if she felt his length one more time. Always, her body was sacred...and he knew a history of prayers.

She shifted onto her knees and brought her free hand to her breast. What would he think if he saw her like that? Tongue itching to speak his name? Her body taut with memories of his?

_Keep going._

The ghost she invented urged her closer to the edge. She held her breath upon every inhalation, waiting and rubbing. The pillow muffled her guilty moans and caught the spit dripping from the corner of her mouth as she approached her finish.

He always liked to warn her. Verbally or otherwise. Sometimes it was a look or a squeeze. A gasp or a laugh. _Always_ did he warn her, but she never shied away or tried to stop him from reaching his climax. On the contrary. She loved pushing him deeper, drawing him closer. The heat of him gave her such a rush - a feeling of fullness her fingers couldn’t hope to mimic.

Still she tried.

And when she finally came, she drooped onto the mattress, hands still mingling with her heat. Mingling fruitlessly.

Haurchefant was gone.

He couldn’t kiss her forehead. He couldn’t cool her down or clean her up after exertions. He couldn't offer to dress himself and fetch a glass of water or a cup of hot chocolate.

He couldn’t hear her weep.

For that, at least, she was thankful.


	3. bargain - haurchefant - t

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Two - bargain**  
Haurchefant-centric, but he doesn't appear. T for teen. Second-person ambiguous WoL. Your buddy Thancred's there. Short and angsty. Alcohol.

You pounded your drink on the table. The real fire was in your eyes. “I shall speak of him,” you said. “Once. On the condition none of you fools ever inquire again.”

Thancred crossed his arms. He sat on the other side of the table, the only other Scion present. Why he alone had accompanied you to Kholusia’s newest tavern, he wasn’t sure. Perhaps he could tell you were already on edge, that a bit of mead could cripple your senses - and indeed your _common_ sense in particular.

The others - strangers to you, their savior - blinked at your sudden declaration. “Forgive us, Hero,” one scruffy Mystel said, leaning forward. “We didn’t mean anything by it. We only wondered whether someone like you has a love off somewhere...worryin’ about you and all.” He looked at the glasses sitting on the table, some empty, others still brimming with foam. “We’re not like to pry.”

Beyond drunk, you eyed each of their faces, searching them for _shame_, wondering how the question had ever come up. _How dare they?_ Eventually you landed on Thancred.

On cue, he raised his chin. “Sit down, friend,” he said in a jovial tone. The darkness of his eyes told you he was more serious than his voice let on. “There are plenty enough stories among us - and no mandate that you be the only storyteller.”

Perhaps it was the alcohol. Or perhaps there was bitterness in your core all along, and it needed the cover of intoxication to pry itself out of the dark. “You didn’t know him,” you spat. “If you hadn’t been hiding out in the woods - who’s to say he wouldn’t be here now?”

Thancred, to his credit, showed no anger. But he couldn’t hide his disappointment.

You snarled and turned your back on your long-surviving companion. The winds of Kholusia couldn’t chill you enough when you plodded out of the tavern, into the night. Into nothing special.

You had gotten a raw deal.


	4. lost - crystal exarch - m

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Three - lost**  
Crystal Exarch. Explicit? Mature? Not sure. Ambiguous WoL. You're definitely fucking around. Exarch gets lost in his own pleasure.

Working against his senses - the pressure, the pleasure, the ringing in his ears - the coldness of his sweat, the heat of his body - your constant, unrelenting motion - 

All of it fueled the Exarch’s growing disorientation.

At first he had taken the lead, tried to push you along so he could work at _your_ pleasure. Not tonight, you decided. Tonight was his. You would teach his body things it had forgotten. Teach his body things it had never known in the first place.

From his lips came a lazy cry, articulated by each repetition you wrought against him. His eyes fluttered closed, and both of his hands grasped weakly at your chest, like he was too weak to hold on for dear life. 

He called your name, taking thrice the time it should have to cover each syllable. 

“Yes?” you answered, like you weren’t trying to send him halfway to the heavens. 

“You...you are...too much....” 

“Too much?” The corner of your lips curled upward. You shifted your angle and he sighed into a pillow. “Seems to me I’m just the right amount. Perhaps even lacking.” 

“Hnn...you are not...lacking...can hardly...think...straight…” 

The sounds he made warmed your very core. With great delight, you increased your pace, your hold, your power. So many nights you had each spent alone, so many now to spend together. There would be plenty time for each of you to test and please the other. 

The thought made you smile. That he hardly knew himself from the pleasure. That he could hardly think straight. 

“Then don’t.” 


	5. shifting blame - aymeric - g

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Four - shifting blame**  
Aymeric. Oh, Aymeric. Foolish Aymeric, calling for the Eyes of Nidhogg to be cast into the abyss. This time, you'll let him have it. General. Ambiguous WoL.

The Crystal Braves - Haurchefant - Estinien’s succumbing to the Eyes - 

All things you felt yourself at least partially to blame.

There was one thing for which you always blamed another.

“Cast them into the abyss!”

The very phrase made your stomach turn. To think the liberation of _nations_ rested upon that man’s arbitrary call. Ascians be damned - it was _Aymeric_ who had named the fate of Ala Mhigo and Doma, and the lives which for them fought.

When finally you worked up the nerve to revisit this old, open wound, you came unannounced to his office and stormed past his detail. You reached his desk with the Fury in your heart - 

And yet…

“My friend,” he said with his blue eyes smiling. “Full glad am I to see you.”

You decided...being angry was lesser than being in his presence.

You remembered also that though he was the one to make the order, you and Alphinaud followed through without a moment’s hesitation.

Your words caught in your throat, and you mumbled like the Azure Dragoon.

Between Nidhogg and Aymeric, you knew whose eyes were the more powerful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tbh I will never quite forgive him...until he runs to greet me when I wake up in Ishgard after fighting Zenos.


	6. vault - g'raha tia - g

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Five - vault**  
G'raha Tia. Developing relationship? Real Crystal Tower hours. Cid is here. **General**, don't get _too_ excited. Ambiguous, brooding WoL.

On some lazy day in Mor Dhona between expeditions into the Tower, young G’raha Tia thought to inquire about the Warrior. Who better to ask than a preoccupied Cid nan Garland, leaning over a makeshift work table and tinkering with something or other? He had traveled with you plenty, G’raha thought.

“Ah. The Hero’s caught your eye, then?” he asked, without taking his eyes off his work.

G’raha sat on a crate behind the engineer, swinging his tail absentmindedly. “Tease me if you must,” he said. “I’m simply curious about our friend’s melancholy nature.”

“Hm.” A series of clinks, metal upon metal, sparks spraying over his shoulder. “You would know the Warrior’s pain, then?”

He cocked his head and ran your expressions through his mind’s eyes. Many times he had caught you looking far, far into the distance, eyes trained on nothing in particular. “If...if that’s what it takes,” he said. “Not even heroes ought suffer alone. Seeing as I’m happy to ramble on for bells, I thought broadening my perspective might make me a more amicable conversation partner.”

Cid’s hammer came down in time with his grunt. “If you truly hope to console, you should just ask yourself. A retelling from me won’t do you any good.”

G’raha twisted his lips and sat a while longer. How could he hope to unlock you? He was no hero, no savior, no saint. You were the bloody _Hero of Eorzea_. Who was he to ask for your troubles, your tales? You were a lockbox he had no right to pry open. A looming vault - the key for which he thought Cid Garlond might provide.

“I’ll consider what you’ve said,” G’raha said before bounding off to distract himself.

-

One night, when he found you, the lone soul lingering at the campfire, he scrounged up two mugs and a handful of ingredients suitable for tea and sauntered over to join you. Flames danced across your face. You remember how they gleamed in G’raha’s green-red eyes.

“Forgive me,” he said. “But I simply cannot stand it any longer. What troubles you, friend? I would hear of your sorrows if you had any reason to believe communing with me might ease your burden.”

You raised an eyebrow and gauged his sincerity. Eyeing what he’d brought along with him, you decided he was very sincere.

“It’s late, G’raha Tia,” you said. “And I have many tales to tell. If you’d truly like an answer.”

He blinked at you once, twice. Then nodded. “I would.”

And so you told him the truth. And he listened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HA! I bet you thought I'd write about Haurchefant. WRONG. <strike>I am dying inside</strike>


	7. first steps - haurchefant - t

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Six - first steps**  
Haurchefant. **Teen**. Big pain energy. First-person ambiguous WoL. Post-Vault. All is not well with the Warrior of Light.

I am ready, I think, to relearn.

To crawl out of bed and face myself and the world. Those who look to me for hope. Those who know now I am not capable of saving everyone.

The Fortemps.

I twist in my bed at the Forgotten Knight and try to ignore the sounds of merriment wafting from the tavern. For days it is here I have slept. I have scarcely left the room.

After the Vault, I sought first to lash out. To cover myself in blood, not caring where it came from. But once I tired and realized I’d be sleeping alone, it was _here_ I wandered. Not _his_ house or _his_ bed or _his_ part of the city. How could I? How could I go back there, knowing who could never?

But it was time. If not for my own sake, for Tataru’s. Alphinaud’s 

I sit up and shuffle my legs out from the covers, let my toes test the wooden floor. It is too cold, and a hunger stirs within me like a beast. Any number of inconveniences could push me backwards. One most of all, I realize. 

Fear. 

How long had I gone without it? When the Scions all but disappeared, it had rooted itself within me, but _that man_ took it away. So accustomed was he to processing pain that he _processed mine for me_ \- and now in his absence I must hurt myself to learn again. 

I stand and stumble forward. One step, two...if I can just get to the armoire...dress myself… 

Three. 

And I’m falling to the ground. Weeping. My heart is full of nothing good. All memories of pleasure have been cast out, their spots now leased by his displacement. I know it’s not how he’d want me to live. I know he’d beg me not to pound my fists into the floorboards, if he could. And the fact that he doesn’t reminds me that he’s truly gone. _Gone_ gone. Like a raft down the river, a candle tossed into the sea.

I weep and weep. He’s not here, so I don’t have to smile anymore. 


	8. forgiven - warrior of light - g

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Seven - forgiven **  
Ambiguous WoL says goodbye to their adoptive (lesbian) mom before heading off to the First. Featuring an OC Miqo'te that belong to comrades. Wholesome. **General**.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I’m surprised I haven’t made a cameo yet.”
> 
> “What?”
> 
> “I mean, not me. But my character. You don’t even have to say her name, just like. She can be some random Miqo in the background.”
> 
> Oh, I can do better than that.

It was a miracle _anyone_ was home, much less Amy. She had always been the less domestic of your adoptive parents. By their guidance, it was no wonder you also wound up an adventurer. That was all you had ever known of them - steel and victory and whatever came knocking next. Of course, the fact that you traveled to Shirogane in the first place proved you had hoped to find someone waiting for you.

Amy wasn’t really the type to wait on anything.

Yet, when you slipped through the sliding door of their barely familiar Eastern home, bought only because Alice had grown tired of burdening retainers with the spoils of war, there she was, reading at the kitchenette.

The Keeper’s mismatched eyes shifted from her book to you, shrinking in the doorway. Doubtless she had heard you coming and already prepared some sarcastic remark. Whatever it had been, it went out the window when she saw the shape you were in.

“What have you done?” she said, holding her book closed with her pinky marking the page.

You shifted your weight and looked away. “Well...uh…”

“What is it you’ve been doing these days? Slaying gods, is it?”

You considered how best to explain your injuries, but knew you wouldn’t have a chance.

“I’m surprised you’ve made it to the door. Half-slain as you are yourself.” Book still in hand, she fixed her glasses and brushed her short, silver hair back from her forehead. “Well, let me take a look.”

She came to you and stood with her arms crossed, taking you in. To most, you would have looked like any ragged adventure. Not so for Amy. She knew better. She could tell you had been having a time.

While her eyes darted about, you observed your surroundings. You wouldn’t call the place finished, but it certainly had its charms. You counted treasures of nearly every nation - blades of Doma, tapestries of the Azim Steppe - was that a painting of Limsa? Amy had always favored the sea-faring state.

“You’ve really done it this time,” Amy said, picking your glove from your hand. “What kind of healers do they keep in...where exactly is it you’ve been off to?”

“Gyr Abania,” you said. A bit shamed.

“You don’t say.” She squinted at you before turning her attention back to your fingers. “I’d be surprised if you can hold a dagger. And this is why you’ve come to us? After all this time?”

You shrugged. “Not...not exactly.”

“Then what?” She let go of your hand. “I haven’t healed in ages.” She shuffled away and started rummaging through some crate, pulling objects here and there. “Damn this clutter.”

You watched her for a while, her tail swishing back and forth in frustration. Whether any words could express your gratitude - your regrets - you weren’t sure. “I’m sorry,” you said. “For not...being around.”

“Well, it seems trouble follows wherever you go, so perhaps it’s been a blessing.” Her hands found something - an old grimoire, just lying in a pile of junk? It showed how much she’d truly taken to the blade.

You twisted your lips. “I mean to say...I’ll be going somewhere different. And I might not be back...for a long time.”

Her ears flicked towards you before she turned her head. “Somewhere different?”

You nodded. “Another star. And before I leave I wanted to say...thank you. For all you’ve done to care for me. Alice, too.”

She eyed you with perhaps a feigned suspicion, but something softened in her face. She knocked the grimoire twice, sending puffs of dust from its cover. “Well, come here. Let’s get you fixed up, then.”

You exhaled and joined her so she could begin her work. When she healed, she sought not to comfort, only to mend. To make useful again. To put the pieces back together, even if it burned. And it did burn.

“You’re forgiven,” she said after a while, unprompted. “Be safe. Or I’ll do you in myself.”


	9. free day - estinien - t

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Eight - free day**  
Estinien. Female Dragoon WoL. A training exercise that ends (begins?) with some mild sexual tension. I think it's safe to call it **t for teen** because nothing graphic happens, really...but let me know if I'm wrong. Might expand later.

A master once said the art of the sword is one art.

He didn’t say jack shit about the lance.

Of Ishgard’s two Azure Dragoons, only one danced. The other, the elder, the original - he _stormed_. That day, he stormed towards the other, the dancer, who flitted from spire to spire of Camp Dragonhead, much to the dismay of onlookers unaccustomed to a weather forecast of snowy with a chance of Dragoon.

Each time the dancer landed she felt the force of gravity pushing harder on her shoulders. Unlike _him_, she cared to practice good posture, good technique, at the cost of her own stamina.

He, on the contrary, crashed from stone to stone like he’d jumped twice as far and weighed twice as much. Perhaps he did - she was lithe, and he was sturdy - but she was not to be outdone by anyone, much less a man who leered at her like he expected a cup of tea for his trouble.

She spun midair and dropped all the way to the stone-frozen ground, farther than she thought he expected.

Not the case. He was soon landing behind her. She felt it before she heard it. And when she heard it, she also noted a gaggle of gasping merchants, clutching their wares a bit more carefully. But by then, she had already risen into the air, lance in hand.

She was running out of rhythm. In a true fight, she was certain she could outlast him - nay, outfight him. Wound him and have him begging for the final blow. But in a chase, he proved too tenacious a foe. She had perhaps one leap left before her legs gave out beneath her, and she didn’t want to land in the snow.

To the tallest tower, then. As always.

She’d removed her helmet and leaned back against the stone by the time he deigned to join her.

“Conceding again, Dragoon?” he said, despite the fact he knew well she _always_ was if she headed here.

For her part, she couldn’t bear to see that sneer of his one more time, not before they’d finished up. “Come then,” she said, eyes closed. “Do what you will.”

“Oh?” He hitched his lance against the stone, using the same wooden knot in the floorboards he always did. “You think to lie back and - “

“Yes, yes, let you prod at me however you please.” She held her hands up in surrender. “I’ve no fight left in me.”

He clicked his helmet off and held it against his side. “No _flight_, perhaps.”

“What, pray tell, are you suggesting?”

He scoffed and propped himself against the stone opposite her, his long legs stretching nearly to her knees. “Disgraceful. That a victor should have to toil for his prize after he's won it.”

“I’m no prize.”

He crossed his arms and feigned consideration, twisting his lips and tilting his head to the left, to the right. After a while, his silence left her with the wind in her ears. Air in her lungs. Now that she was resting, her nostrils burned from breathing so heavily in the droughty atmosphere of Coerthas. The sweat on her brow was beginning to chill.

She shuddered. “I’m cold.”

He flicked an eyebrow up without opening his eyes. “It’s your choice.”

This man, this plodding nightmare of a man, this heavy-stepping fool, pouting like she had an obligation to take charge because he’d charged at her. It made her skin warm beneath her ice-dry sweat. With an exasperated groan, she brought herself to stand and meandered over to him, hitching her knee beneath his chin.

He looked obediently up at her, like his eyes were made of glass. For once, she found herself smirking down at him and his stupid cheekbones, his stupid nose. It gave her pleasure. Just a little bit - it gave her _comfort_.

“Hello,” she said, sinking down with a leg on either side of him.

He hummed. “And your armor?”

“I hope to inspire you to remove it. As you always do.”

“Hmph.” He set his hands on her hips and tugged her just a bit closer. “Why must I do all the work?”


	10. hesitate - zenos - t

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Nine - hesitate**  
Zenos. Ambiguous WoL is haunted by past encounters with this monster of a man. **T for teen**. It's short.

The storm manifests in your dreams, and so does he. By the time you see him, you are already a worthless mound of flesh and bones. Sweat pools as your body bends, and your own breaths do little to keep you breathing.

They cannot hope to keep you fighting.

This massive mountain of a man clicks toward you, larger than life, as he was in reality, and even through his helmet you feel the weight of his abject _disgust_ with what he’s found in you - or what he’s failed to find.

_It doesn’t make any sense_, you think, shaking. _It isn’t fair. How can this be possible?_

As if he’s heard your thoughts, a metallic chuckle emanates from his helmet. “You are an utter disappointment.”

The blade is at your throat. Every one of your muscles tightens and prepares for death.

But even in the dream, it never comes.

Each morning, you awaken covered in sweat with sunlight pouring onto your face like rain. The thought of sleeping again keeps you from sleeping, and often you find yourself delaying the inevitable by strolling each night through whatever locale you inhabit. The storm comes with sleep. And he, with the storm.

You tell no one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no particular love for Zenos, except he's a beautiful blond dumbass. Or is he more...? Someone enlighten me.


	11. foster - haurchefant - t

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Ten - foster**  
Haurchefant-posting again. Naked cuddling, but probably **t for teen**. Ambiguous WoL begins to feel like part of the Fortemps family. Angst and fluff?

You noticed it one evening when Artoirel joined you in the sitting room wordlessly, choosing the sofa to your side and wielding nothing but a book, like you. Such a mundane gesture, but one that showed you on some level he - and indeed, his _family_ \- had grown accustomed enough to your presence that they felt no need to constantly engage.

After regarding him, you returned your eyes to the page but stopped reading. What had done the trick? Was it your deeds? Your shyness? You hoped to the gods they hadn't heard you and Haurchefant - that their relaxed attitude hadn't come from an understanding of how often you and the man connected on the physical.

The thought twisted your lips, but the eldest Fortemps broke the unsavory path your mind had taken.

"Emmanellain has taken charge of supper for the evening," he said with a hint of darkness.

It rubbed off on you. "You mean Honoroit has found himself masquerading as a culinarian?"

"Tis my brother doing the masquerading. I daresay the boy had no choice but to learn the art in earnest."

You offered a chuckle, but your lips curled into a great smile. Not for the comment - but for the honey flowing in your heart.

After a few days of quiet radiance, you returned to your lover at Camp Dragonhead.

“Is it silly,” you started, naked in his arms before the fire in his quarters, “that I’ve started to feel as though...I am a part of your family?”

“Not at all,” he said, rubbing your collarbones. The warmth of the flames couldn’t compare to the heat of his chest on your back, the smile pressed against your neck. “Full glad am I that you have found comfort in what I could offer you.”

You leaned into him. “_All_ you offer comforts me.”

“Mm.” Hands rubbed your chest, your belly, as your lover filled his lungs with your scent. “Are you comfortable now?”

“Of course.”

“Then...I mean to offer you something else.”

As he stood, he lifted you without warning. Your arm slipped around his neck just before you realized he meant to sit you on a chair by the fire. Once he had, he set his fingertips on your knees, kissed your forehead, and disappeared to the back of the room.

You turned over your shoulder. “Haurchefant?”

“Just a moment.”

A tingle moved through you, starting at your toes. You pulled your legs from the ground and held your arms around your knees. Without him at your back, the chill grew stronger as you waited.

After a while, his hands appeared over your shoulders. In them - a plain wooden box.

You took it. “Haurchefant…?”

“Open it, my love.”

You cupped the lid in your palm and waited for him to circle back around and kneel before you, smiling as he did in battle.

“Haurchefant,” you said one more time, eyebrows low.

He nodded once. Flames spun, reflected in his eyes. “Open it.”

Inside the box was a silver ring. Parts of your body grew weak when you saw it. If only you could have stopped time, that you might muster the strength to take it smiling. If only you could have stayed there forever.

“I am asking for your hand eternally,” he said. “Though I am a bastard, I am not a fool - not fool enough to regret not having asked, as it may be.”

His name sputtered from your lips, but you could say no other.

“If you would have me when this is all over,” he continued. “If you would spend your life with me...though I know there is much else for you to do…”

The box nearly slipped from your hands your fingers were shaking so severely. Setting it on your lap, you cried out: “I would have you this very moment!”

He offered perhaps the most serious expression you’d yet seen him wear.

“Each moment it is not done is a moment I live wanting!” you said. “I would have you...as soon as possible...you silly man.” You sobbed once and turned your head to the wooden floorboards, but his hand caught your chin.

“Then it will be done,” he said, voice weak as a whisper. “I shall smile forever at your side.”

Soon, he was holding you like his life depended on it. You would marry this man and forever bear his name, his history, his pain. You would wear his love at every level. Your very aether would mantle him. And you would be forever grateful for the weight.

In the morning, he told you _he_ wanted to tell his father, although you were slated to see him first. You agreed. When you returned to Ishgard proper, you encountered the Count after rendezvousing with Alphinaud at the manor.

“You have been to see my son, yes?” the lord asked. Before you could answer, he continued. “I know it by the smile on your face.”

You lowered your gaze in a short-sighted attempt to hide your blush. “Your intuition is well-informed, my lord.”

“There is no need for formalities between us,” he said. “You and yours are like family. After all you’ve done for this house and the Holy See itself.” 

You swallowed your desire to tell him of the ring you hid on your person, knowing you couldn’t deny your love the pleasure of doing his father proud. “I thank you,” you said. “Without your hospitality...I shudder to think where I may have ended up.”

He smiled.

Later, this was a man you could not look in the eye.


	12. snuff - thordan - t

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Y'ALL need to calm down with this prompt and read Othello or something. <strike>tbh I haven't read Othello either but uhhh</strike>
> 
> **Eleven - snuff**  
Let's put Thordan down. From his perspective. Short. **T for teen**, I'm not sure. Dude's dying.

Here was a vision of true power - and evil.

Backlit-black, the Warrior stood before him with eyes glistening like beads of prayer, until somehow un-mystically those eyes glistened no longer. And all he saw was silhouette.

Moments earlier - his old frame had held the full weight of _legacy_ and more, with bones and muscles expanded to fit the burden of his line, heart given to boldness so he could snuff out that light that plagued all he was charged with protecting, enforcing, preserving.

It would all disappear. With his failure.

That figure loomed ahead of him, radiating dark heresy.

“Who - what are you?”

They answered not.

Somehow - for just an instant - he thought - perhaps, he had _just_ understood their nature - but no, it _couldn’t be_. - 

Such things - impossible.

Such things.

Forbidden.

Unholy.

He died thankful he had never had to face the truth.


	13. fingers crossed - lucia - e

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Twelve - fingers crossed**  
WoL and Lucia. **Explicit**. Aymeric's second-in-command catches you making a particular purchase and wants you to demonstrate. Femslash.
> 
> Um can we do more femslash? I think we should do more femslash. I'm dead.

Somehow, it came to be that the Lord Commander’s second-in-command was sitting on the wooden floor of your room at the Forgotten Knight, legs politely tucked beneath her, face a bit more expressive than usual - like she was considering whether the whole affair was a bad idea.

The whole affair had started in a shady corner of the marketplace, where you had purchased a certain _toy_ and, fingers crossed, begun making your way back to your quarters believing no soul with the boldness to approach would cross your path and ask questions.

How wrong you were, as it turned out.

Yes, you had noticed the Garlean’s gaze before, stolen while her lord addressed you, or while you trained at the barracks. You hadn’t thought her smitten enough to press you further once she realized how bad a liar you were after bumping into you with a bag _oh-so discreetly_ white-knuckle clutched to your side.

“Forgive me,” she’d said with her teeth held together. “I...must admit a curiosity.”

You, the Warrior of Light, Eikon Slayer and Hero of Eorzea, as it happened, felt your face turn red. “Er...well...if you’d care to join me.”

She had cared. And now she sat before you in casual clothes, eyes twitching from your face to the piece in your hand.

“W-well then,” she said. “I suppose it doesn’t look so complicated.”

You shook your head and looked away. “Well, no. But it helps to er...warm up as it may be.”

She furled her platinum brow. “That seems a task of some impropriety when by one’s lonesome.”

“Thankfully, there are two of us.” The words barely made it from your lips, half-jest, half-sincerity.

By the wide-eyed look on Lucia’s face, you believed (and perhaps hoped) she’d taken it as the former. “Milady,” she said. “It shames me to ask a vaunted hero as yourself. I am certain you are familiar with my...interest in you.”

“Y-yes.”

“Might I trouble you for a demonstration?”

“A-ah…” You brushed your hair from your face. “The pleasure would be mine.”

The progression from there was a bit awkward. With some hesitance, you rose to cup her cheeks in your hands and tested her lips with a kiss. She leaned in with a bit more force than you expected, and you pulled back to see her eyes low with lust and embarrassment. “Please,” she said. “Continue.”

You moved a hand to the back of her neck and held her next your lips met. A want had burned within her. Her movement told you well enough that she had held it for a long time.

Your other hand trailed from her cheek to her collar bone then to her chest. When you chanced to squeeze, she inhaled from your mouth and drooped closer to you, leaned into your grasping hand. The customary armor she wore did little to complement her bosom. The gods had seen fit to bless her with far larger charms than you.

A hardness from beneath her blouse - you’d found her nipple. The next natural step was to skip your thumb over it. She twitched each time and finally broke the kiss.

“Warrior,” she said, voice low. “I have shamed myself with thoughts of - of moments like these.”

“I can tell,” you said. “Let me help you.”

Hands worked to undo her blouse and yours. Moments later hers sat crumpled by the door, while yours hung, unbuttoned, over your shoulders. She ogled you, but you thought to cut her off by closing your lips around her right nipple - working her left with your fingers.

Your name burst from her lips.

“Mm,” you said. “Shall I answer or keep to my task?”

“I pray - don’t stop.”

Shy hands danced above your neck. A gentle bite persuaded them to come down harder upon you, hold you into Lucia’s pale breasts. Your own were starting to feel a bit neglected.

You pulled away and straddled her on your knees, so her nose hit your sternum. The plea in her eyes surprised you. The question. This fine knight, caught in the search for permission. Your own eyes answered: _do it._

Hot breath hit you before her greedy lips latched on. The pleasure sent colors through your spine and prompted you to relax on her thighs - though you admit you starting bucking ilms once you had, seeking a bit more friction.

You cradled her head as she worked, rubbing at her hairline. Pressing harder got you a moan.

"Warrior of Light," she said. "Even now, radiant."

"Ah." You kissed her forehead, just above her hidden eye. "Are you feeling warmed up, then?"

Stillness took her. “M-milady…”

You shuffled your hand to the band of her trousers. With your palm flush against her stomach, you could feel tiny goosebumps as she breathed. “If I have your permission…”

“Yes...yes please.”

You slipped inside.

Arousal had already soaked the base of her smallclothes. It sent a tingle through your spine. The wetness made the outline of her lips clear as they surged in anticipation. You traced and teased through the fabric until she’d worked the nerve to shift her hips against you. To answer her call, you slipped your pinky finger beneath the fabric and moved it to the side, so the rest of your fingers could wave along her sex.

With a grunt, she pressed her elbows into her sides. “Halone,” she said. “I’m not sure I can make it.”

You lifted all but your middle finger from her. With it, you pressed her pulsing clit just enough to make her shudder. “You will,” you said.

“I’d...I’d like to undress more...I can scarcely breathe.”

“Of course.”

She took off her remaining clothes, and you yours - all but your shabby top and smallclothes. Once you’d finished you rushed her along to the bed and brought the toy with you. Your positions remained much the same as they had on the floor, with her pressing into the wall and you looming.

“You are striking,” she said taking in your near-naked form. “Beautiful.”

“As are you. I have...envied Aymeric in the past.”

Her face flushed. “Forgive me. You’ve got the wrong of it...the lord and I have not…”

“No?”

“I have eyes only for the fairer sex. And now...only for you.”

A lust-borne confession? Or one she held in her heart and not her loins? Regardless, she didn’t give you a chance to respond.

“Please...before I shame myself further. I won’t be long...” She was gritting her teeth.

“There is no shame in what we’re doing,” you said. “I’m...glad I’ve someone to do it with.”

You set the toy’s tip at her entrance and rubbed it back and forth, as you’d done with others in the past. While she winced, you set your eyes upon her lips - and then her _lips_ that twitched each time you passed her most sensitive point. You set your free hand against her shoulder. Fingernails pressed into her skin warned her and she braced.

First the rounded tip breached her - then the rest slipped inside.

“Is it all right?”

“I...I...continue.”

You pushed farther, pushed until the fingers holding the toy were pressed into her skin, slick with arousal. The muscles tensed around its length but still you waited.

“Please.”

“Lucia…”

You kissed her - then spread her thighs apart a bit more so you could place your lips just above her entrance - and kissed her clit as well.

“Ah!”

That’s when you decided to move.

From then, there was no stopping. While your hand pulled back and forth, you held her clit between your tongue and upper lip, rolling it when you felt like it. The scent of her arousal spurred yours - but in your loving you were true. Her pleasure would come first.

She whimpered and shifted her leg. You pushed it back and pumped faster, lapping.

Her arms knocked against the wall behind her as she slumped into your ministrations, moaning.

“You like it, then?” you said.

“I’m...soon…”

You licked and fucked her with the toy, growing more ravenous every thrust. The muscles of her thighs warned you of her imminent climax. And soon she cried out your name.

Both of her legs pressed into the bed so she could rut against you in the penultimate throes of ecstasy. You balanced yourself wide-eyed with the mattress and let her work herself. As her pace slowed and her hips hovered down, you kept thrusting the toy slow and slower. You aimed to lengthen her orgasm as much as possible.

Quivering fingers lifted your chin. Lucia’s face was bright pink. Debauchery, you decided, looked very good on her. “Incredible,” she said.

“I am glad you are pleased.” You tested the juices on your lips. “I didn’t know I had the knack for demonstrations.”

“Next time,” she said, huffing, “I’d like to return the favor.”


	14. wax - warrior of light mid-shb - g

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Thirteen - wax**  
WoLxExarch light. Implied? Haurchefant also implied. A letter written by WoL. Universe wherein WoL does not make it tothe end of ShB and the Exarch survives. Don't think too hard. **General**.

[The following excerpt appeared in a missive found by a companion of the Warrior of Darkness upon their untimely departure from this world. This excerpt had been writ upon the first of many pages sealed by wax stamp in a formidable parchment sleeve. While this document is a duplication of that original work, these are the Warrior's words as they appeared.]

With my task nigh accomplished, I prepare this letter hoping I never have need of it. But I prepare it nonetheless.

Words have never been my strong suit. Long have I deferred to action when words may have sufficed - but that is precisely why I take now to gather my thoughts so I never find myself forced to rely upon my own ability to communicate with time ticking by.

As it ticks now - three of the five Lightwardens of Norvrandt are slain by my hand and those of my comrades.

When all is said and done, this describes a victory, and I intend to follow through on its promise, but I feel things inside me - things that make me doubt whether I’m destined to stand when all is said and done.

I don’t know what precisely could happen to me..but I know something could happen.

Thus, have I prepared my thoughts and left them in a place I hope someone would come across in the event I leave with thoughts yet unspoken.

[Although there was space left upon this first page of the Warrior's epistle, the remainder of the work continues on an entirely different sheet Based on the quality and condition of the original paper, historians have speculated the Warrior may have discarded a portion of the letter at this point and begun anew. The following excerpt most immediately succeeds the prior.]

Before I proceed, I must relate a thought I’ve had just now as I pen this note.

Not so long ago, before Ala Mhigo and Doma won their freedom, before even Ishgard abandoned her war against the Dravanians, and indeed before I saw the light fade from my beloved’s eyes - I first ventured into the Crystal Tower with our comrade Cid Garlond, the Sons of Saint Coinach, and a man called G’raha Tia.

That man, who came to be my dear friend, paid a steep price to fulfill his destiny and, I believe, play a role in the future of our realm - and indeed all realms.

Though he is like to remain hidden, I believe he yet lives. And I believe he is closer than he would have me think.

There are things I hope to speak of - to relay in this letter - that I would have reach his ears, his eyes. So I implore you, now-keeper of my thoughts: all who have gravitated towards me, all who seek to mourn me when I’m gone - produce this document for them.

I have no doubt you shall find him soon enough.

[Although the precise location of the original documents is unknown, it is generally believed the Crystarium's Exarch took possession of them before his ill-fated sojourn into the Empty. Whether they remain hidden in the Crystal Tower or accompanied the Exarch in his travels is unknown.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is...more I want to say but...hnn...


	15. scour - haurchefant - m

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Fourteen - scour**  
Haurchefant. WoL female and smaller than he but ambiguous otherwise. **Mature**. Haurchefant helps WoL get a good knight's sleep however he can.

He always stayed up long enough to see her sleeping, and often a bit longer than that. Just in case.

The first night they spent together came after the rescue of young Lord Emmanellain from the Vanu Vanu. With her helmet off, she’d stopped Haurchefant in the hallway, just as he made for the door. From the look on her face alone, he could tell she was ready to stop skirting the validity of their feelings for one another. He was happy to secret her away to his quarters and speak frankly - his chest nigh bursting from the emotional bottleneck of truths making their way out all at once.

He held her tiny body for the first time and asked her why she’d approached him now. What had given her the impulse?

“That look you gave me in the Sea of Clouds,” she had said, leaning into his heartbeat. “I’ve never felt safer. I’ve never felt more trust.”

When she began stirring in the night, he remembered her words and set his hand to stroking her forehead. Soon, she mumbled.

“What is it, my sweet?” he whispered. When she didn’t reply, he felt strange at having used a pet name without her express permission...but he soon realized she had never truly awoken.

That didn’t stop her from speaking. Leaning in, he caught perhaps every second word, the heat of her body against his bare chest. _Blood_, he was certain. _Sorry_, not quite as. But he soon gathered she was speaking of her own hands, her own horrors, and sweating more every minute.

No matter. The gods made Coerthas cold for lovers as he.

He snaked his arm around her front and sought those hands that troubled her so. When his fingers closed around hers, she winced and spoke louder.

“You mustn’t touch me,” she hissed. “I’m not - I’m not clean.”

He paused. Moonlight filtered through the window and over her shoulder, just enough for him to see her eyes remained closed. “Not clean?”

“My sins anoint me.” A shiver shook her. “Their blood - I don’t want this! Do away with me...quickly.”

“I should never.” He sat up with a new energy and nowhere to put it. How often, he wondered, did the Warrior’s dreams hold her hostage? Watching her chest heaving, he realized interrogating her would get them nowhere, so he lay down against her once more - closer now, and with more resolve.

She squirmed in his arms. “You mustn’t - “

His lips were at her ear, the scent of her hair still new and enchanting, even as she cried. “You are clean,” he said. It hurt him to see her so troubled, but he tried to sound calm and authoritative, like none could ever doubt the veracity of his words. “You are safe now.”

Her cries quieted some, but still her fingers jerked against his. “Please…”

“You are loved.”

A tiny sound came from her throat, a whimper. ‘I don’t...I don’t want to be red anymore…”

He kissed the back of her neck and let his lips linger as he breathed. Sleep would be his to take again, soon enough. “Be held, my sweet. And rest. You are safe. No harm shall befall you as long as we are together.”

From then on, terror broke her slumber as often as once a week. Full glad was he to comfort her as he was capable.

-

As far as the Warrior knew, she had been fortunate to sleep without incident in the company of someone she hoped dearly not to ward away. Every morning she woke more rested than she’d been in moons, curled against a man nigh twice her size with more than twice her optimism. She’d nuzzle backwards into his chest until the motion alerted him. He’d say something simple like “Up, are we?” or “There you are.” Each time it made her feel less like a warrior and more like herself. A feeling she craved deeply.

Sometimes, she would tease him for his hair or his breath or his consistent arousal - which she was happy to tend to, once they’d become intimate. But every now and then, she would rise to straddle him, only to feel a gentle hand upon her cheek - some kind of dream still lingering in his eyes - his brow not quite furled, but hinting at a deeper question than he was willing to voice.

“Are you well this morning?” he would ask.

“Of course.” She’d blink and tilt her head. “Are you?”

Most often he took a few moments to observe her, like he wanted to make sure she was telling the truth before answering in kind. “You shall soon find out just how well I’m feeling.”

He liked to take her in all sorts of ways, but on mornings like that he’d do it simply, slowly. He’d rest his forehead against hers and fuck her so gently the bed barely rocked until one of them approached climax. They’d lock eyes until the pleasure inevitably blinked hers shut.

And just before it did, she’d see his expression change. She’d feel him rock a bit harder, hold her more intently. The tide erased any questions she had, and he was quick to follow once she'd reached bliss.

He liked carrying her to the shower when no one was around to witness the spectacle. They’d help each other clean themselves, sometimes engaging in further acts of debauchery, until finally they had no excuse but to break fast and venture out into a world that could never quite guarantee them safe return.

“I am off,” she would say before helming herself. “And I shall miss you greatly.”

He'd smile. “Send word if you have need of my shield. I shall be at your side the very next instant.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel I have been permanently damaged by final fantasy xiv heavensward, can I sue?


	16. free day - haurchefant - m

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Fifteen - free day**  
1100+ more words of Haurchefant pain. Female Au Ra WoL, nameless. Mid-Stormblood, she considers her heritage and how well her lover took to it. **Mature.**.

The waters of the Ruby Sea never took her breath away. It was the air of Sui-no-Sato. Even as the village's keepers turned the Warrior away, even as the locals scolded their children for staring at foreigners, the Warrior was captivated.

Alisaie and Lyse not far behind, she stepped forward and lifted her gaze to nothing in particular.

These people - they were like her. She was like _them_. For the first time in what felt like ages, she removed her helmet without worrying about what people would make of her adornments. They wouldn’t call her a dragon or a demon or a - 

“My friend. Is aught amiss?” Alisaie tiptoed to the Warrior.

“Alisaie,” Lyse said. “Perhaps we should resume our search in the Ruby Sea and let the Warrior continue here.”

The Elezen twisted her lips in thought for a moment, and then felt awfully silly for having needed time to read between the lines in the first place. “I-I see. Perhaps you’re right. Very well.”

“We may reconvene in Tamamizu, should our efforts prove fruitless.”

The Warrior moved her hand in acknowledgement, but kept her eyes focused on the radiant light of the village and the impossibly familiar faces it illuminated. Helmet held in both hands afront her stomach as in offering, she began to wander.

Was it that she saw herself? Her biological parents? She circled the place as both outsider and kin, marked equally by her tail and scales, her western mannerisms and dress. Each woman she saw made her shrink her shoulders and blush. Each man compelled her to reach as tall as they towered - as best she could with her small stature and martial ego.

As a child, her parents had urged her away from Au Ri culture, hoping to keep her as un-othered by Eorezans as possible. When she strayed from her mother and father, her next set of guardians were Miqo’te who knew and cared nothing for her heritage, though the Warrior maintained they had loved her much more.

Now that she was _here_, she wasn’t sure what to feel.

Upon making her first round about the village, an open door gave way to a magnificent couple. The woman, not much larger than she, the man nigh twice as tall and clearly smitten by his partner. The woman’s gentle hands rested upon her belly, ripe with child. She was glowing in anticipation of motherhood. Did their hearts yet beat together? Despite the horns on the man’s face and the severity of his gaze, his smile couldn’t help but draw her thoughts to a particular Elezen...

...someone to whom she wished dearly she could have shown the village…

...shown more someday, perhaps…

_No other would see me as a mother, that much is certain._

Her fingers shook, cradling a helmet instead of an unborn baby.

As the thought fizzled through her, she knew she would have to leave. If they didn’t find that damn relic soon, she’d need rest if only to give her heart a well-deserved break.

-

When next she sought sleep, the names of those she had trusted with the truth of her race flitted about her mind. Many had known her as an Au Ri lancer of Gridania, but upon taking to Coerthas to become a Dragoon, she had found her resemblance to the Ishgardians’ ancestral enemy as yet another factor keeping her from acceptance. Thankfully, many passersby assumed her horns were merely eccentric additions to the traditional mail of an otherwise honorable dragon slayer.

Estinien was first, she thought. As they grew closer through training, he had become more curious, and eventually more trusted. Next, she had chanced to show those at Camp Dragonhead, as they had become accustomed to her presence anyway. Once, she had shown G’raha Tia...not long before his final descent into the Crystal Tower. She was glad that she had.

By the end of the Dragonsong War, all of Ishgard knew the truth of her background, but she wore the helmet anyway. Without Haurchefant at her side, there was only so much she could weather, no matter how sweet Aymeric’s words of assurance sounded over her shoulder.

As she tried to sleep, she mostly thought of Haurchefant.

He would not want her to live in hiding or feel shame.

She twisted herself up to a sitting position and hugged a pillow to her chest. A good cry was in order, but it never quite culminated. Had she finally shed what tears she could muster?

He had loved every ilm of her, every skin-kissed, scale-covered ilm. With enthusiasm, he had learned to sleep, kiss, and cuddle in ways conducive to their mutual bliss and comfort. Even more eagerly, he found ways to treat her tail with care, to rub at its base for her pleasure. When he took her from behind, he liked to prop it up with his thumb, pressuring at the proper moments even as his own body surged and shook.

And though she was much smaller, lust never blinded him to her needs. Oh, he was full capable of fucking her senseless - and he had - but never before she was ready to beg for what he could offer.

He had _loved_ her strangeness - but not half as much as he loved _her_.

Perhaps, through his memory, she could learn to love herself just a fraction more.

Her thoughts drifted once again to the Au Ri couple she had seen in the village.

If her lover’s seed had quickened within her, what face would he have made upon hearing the news? Would he have cried? Would he have carried her to his father’s manor in a rush of excitement? What kind of father would he have lived to become? A good one. A kind one. A radiantly proud one.

She imagined him kissing her belly button and pressing his ear to listen - or perhaps his lips to speak. “Your mother is hope incarnate,” he would have said to the light growing within her, thinking the Warrior couldn’t hear his deeply felt words. “And you are brighter than the brightest star.”

A shudder forced her to grip the pillow tighter. These thoughts tortured her, but somehow made her more alive...made _him_ more alive…or perhaps less dead...

There were nights she truly wished he had left a piece of himself to grow inside her.

There were nights the very idea made her numb and sick with dreams. Each morning after, she woke in a cold sweat, disgusted with herself for being such an unholy masochist, a repulsive sinner of the lowest order.

She decided then: if she woke without peril, she would leave the helmet off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i think i love suffering


	17. jitter - haurchefant - e

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Sixteen - jitter**  
Haurchefant. **Explicit**. Great gods. Ambigious WoL. You lose your virginity to a beautiful elf man. Or do you?

His room was as it always was - neat, spacious, and very warm. The fire made sure of that. His shelves didn’t hold many books, his desk perhaps a few too many papers, but altogether it was too much _room_ for a man of his ilk.

As familiar as the space had grown to you, you couldn’t help but twist your fingers together as he led you inside this time, his arm holding the door open above your head.

It was fear that colored your skin - fear first, excitement second. Throughout the day they had switched places, waxed and waned as you started having second thoughts about your arrangement.

_Gods_, were you still about calling it an arrangement?

You stood in the center of the room with your weight shifted to the leg closest the fire. The door clicked behind you: this was it, then.

_It_ wasn’t an arrangement, per se. Certainly, it was _pre-discussed_ but not something so clinical as an _arrangement_. Call it a _natural conclusion_ \- well, perhaps not a conclusion - a beginning? A coming together? _No_. That one made you blush, and you didn’t want to make any presumptions about who would or wouldn’t _come_ or whether or not they would come together.

You eyed the bed like it could swallow you whole.

“Shall we sit by the fire?”

You jumped at the sound of his voice and realized how warm you felt under your clothes. “By the fire?” you said. “You don’t want to…” 

“Your comfort is my upmost priority. Now as ever” The smile in his eyes told you it was true.

“A-ah...forgive me.” Tonight was to be the night, but other than that what made it so different than the other times you had pleased one another? He had seen you and you had seen him laid bare and vulnerable. By this time, he knew well the faces you made at climax, and you had long ago tasted his seed.

But you had never before...by him nor any other...been truly…

_Fucked._

“Let me help you,” he said, seeing your hands struggling to rid yourself of armor.

“T-thank you...I shall return the favor.”

A hum of a laugh. “My love.”

You let him undo, unhook, unclasp as he had many times before. Beneath your mail was something modest, nothing special. It was an attempt to convince yourself that there was no particular reason the night was noteworthy. Virginity is a worthless concept, you told yourself, and if you’ve done the other half the next should come just as easily, yes?

He stood behind you and lifted your chest piece over your head. No sooner had you heard it set aside were his arms around your waist, his chin resting over your shoulder. You felt so loved your stomach hurt. “Be not afraid,” he said. “You...you are safe.”

“I’m not afraid, silly.”

“You are shaking.” He kissed your cheek and let you go. “Forgive me, Warrior, but there are parts of your body that cannot lie.”

You had it in your head to turn around and set him straight. You were _not_ scared, it was just the Coerthan cold, old fool!

But with the way he looked at you - indeed, the ways in which he already knew you so well - there was no denying the truth.

You bit your lip, looking down as you reached up to help him free himself of his mail, in so much as you were capable of helping the much taller man. “Ah...well...I know I have no reason to fear...not really…”

“Do not invalidate your own feelings.” With a shake, he slipped his gauntlets off and set them in the growing pile of armor.

“Really, it’s-”

“I want you to know - as always - that should anything ever make you uncomfortable, you need only say the word.”

You hated how serious he sounded. How unlike himself. And yet, you couldn’t quite bring yourself to make him stop. Not with words, anyway.

“A warrior you may be, but that doesn’t mean - “

You set your finger on his mouth and tried your best to look confident. “You are right. Let us...let us sit by the fire.”

-

You sat by the fire, he at your back, you in his arms, as had been many times before. As usual, he whispered little stories into your ear and rocked you gently with his words. “Did I tell you about the knight I encountered…” or “Had you seen the look on her face…”

All of it was sweet and warm. Nigh saccharine. All of it led you to the realization that he had meant what he said. If time progressed and you never stopped shaking or stalling - if you never let him touch you again - if he never slid inside you - he would still love you and treat you as his honorable partner.

He was in the middle of a sentence when you tilted your head back and cut him off with a kiss. His arms tensed, and the kiss lingered, long and gentle, reminiscent of the first time your lips had touched. Tonight would also be a first time. You had re-decided. Once you pulled back, you spoke. “Carry me to the bed.”

“To the bed, you say? As you wish.” He hoisted himself to a standing position, bringing you along with him.

Once he’d set you down, he stood with his hands upon his hips, beaming with pride. The covers beneath you were cold compared to the fire, though your clothes still held warmth. “Haurchefant,” you said, half-whining. “You aught kiss me more, if truly you mean to seduce me.”

“Seduce you? And here I thought I was finally _your_ target.”

“I...I should like very much for you to show me how it’s done.”

The bed shifted with the weight of his knee. “Ah…” One hand to your shoulder, the other to the bed frame. “I find that idea more than tolerable…so long as you find it...”

“I want this. I’ve wanted this always with you. Please…I just need…”

“Guidance...I see.”

The weight of his body pressed against you. Soon you knew his hands would be between your legs, and soon after you would undress completely, as would he. It had happened before. It happened again.

Your breath hitched when he inserted the first finger, but you were ready for that. That was familiar enough.

“It’s just a bit more than this…” He said, laughing.

“I know very well...it’s quite a bit more than that…”

“You flatter me, darling!”

He kept about with that motion for a while, until you started rearing into his hand. A finger that’d been pressuring outside your entrance joined the one inside. This, too, had happened before, but now you felt it a bit more desperately. Looking down, you could see he was more than ready to escalate, but still he waited.

_There are parts of your body that cannot lie._

Remembrance made you smile, but arousal blinked your eyes closed. The idea of him wanting you weakened your limbs and shortened your breaths. This beautiful man. How he must have longed to mount you. How hot he would feel, deflowering his warrior.

You were going to come if you didn’t do something.

“Haurchefant!” You said sitting up.

He blinked at you.

“You must…! Before it’s too late!”

“Too late?” He feigned panic, shuffling closer. “Here I thought all the time in the world was ours to take!”

With his forearms locking you into place, you laughed right into his nose. “The time is now!”

Lips connected, hips itching to be so, he set his tip at your entrance and shocked you by testing it back and forth without entering. The sound you made pleased him. You could tell because his lips curled against yours.

He pulled back. “Say only the word.”

“Right now the word is _go_. Please! Before I burst!”

Pink looked good on his pale and lusty face, and you wanted to keep looking at it, but he bowed his head to check his positioning before you felt the first real push.

It hurt - he was so much larger than the sum of two fingers - but you were a warrior, not a quitter.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes…” Your tongue was ready to hang out of your mouth. “Keep going.”

He pushed farther and you opened up more. Never had you felt so full. The covers wrinkled as you clutched at them, so enthralled you couldn’t even tell what kinds of noises had escaped your open mouth.

They must have scared him, for his progress paused. “My love.” Voice nigh a whisper, he sailed his hand across your cheek. “Shall I...stop, then?”

Your breaths were ragged, yes, and you almost took him up on his offer...but something about him becoming motionless, already so entrenched within you...it ignited something different.

Something...hungry.

Your voice was even weaker than his. “I don’t want you to stop.”

His eyes grew narrow with lust.

“I want to see how long a man like you can keep going."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I RAN OUT OF TIME I'M SORRY, I'LL FINISH LATER, HELP


	18. obeisant - haurchefant - e (continued from jitter)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Seventeen - obeisant**  
Haurchefant. Continued from 16. Both are **explicit**. God I wish that were me. You, ambiguous WoL, lose your virginity.

“By your leave, then...I will continue.”

From your mouth came a mess of words caught between noisy breaths. Something ugly, something rushed like _Pleasedontstopgo_ or _IwantthisIwantit_. The same patience that comforted you moments before now drove you mad.

What’s worse, you were almost certain he could _tell_. That longing pout of his - how devilish it became as he just barely nudged himself back and forth with a hand on either side of your head.

“Wh...what are you…”

“I can scarcely believe it,” he said, eyes to the ceiling. “You really _are_ a virgin.”

Red flushed your face. “Y-yes. I’m working to mend that, a-as it happens.”

“I can’t believe it!”

“You didn’t believe me?”

“No - I can’t believe _I_ have the privilege of - “

Between the pressure and the truth, he lost himself. He dropped his head to your chest in a fit of laughter, his soft hair mingling with your collarbone. You didn’t think you’d ever heard a sound so pure...

Purely _infuriating_!!!

Open as your mouth was, you lost the chance to protest when he planted his lips to yours and kissed you until you were moaning into him, rhythm-perfect with the renewed vigor of his thrusts. Oh, he was _working_ you, slow and hard.

He let the kiss fade and you opened your eyes. Without his lips upon you, there was nothing to keep your tongue from rolling to the corner of your mouth. He seemed - no he _was_ impossibly large, and not just because his length was feeding you sensations. Now that you were well entangled, the idea of him so easily being able to cradle your entire being was intoxicating.

You rolled your head to the side and rubbed your cheek on his arm, wondering if he’d let you bite him if you needed to.

“Is this all right?” he asked.

Before your answer came a pitiful sound. “Nn...yes but…” You willed your eyes open. He was listening intently. His whole body was, most likely. “Do you...do I feel good?”

He laughed like he was short of breath. “Are you _mad_, my love?” He shifted his arms to cradle your head, his back hunched to stay connected in the right places. It was like the fire was right before you. “Every moment is one in which you’d have me shame myself.”

“O-oh…” You felt so naive. “Well you must persist for a while longer.”

He groaned, hitting you deeply. You swear you saw stars. “I may be able to muster the strength,” he said. “On the condition you focus on your own pleasure instead of mine.”

“I think I can do that…”

Sometimes, you looked at him while he worked. Sometimes your eyes fluttered closed. The consistency of his pace gave you plenty of time to map the electricity running from end to end of your body.

At first, each fuck brought a kind of pinching to your attention; the only remedy, you found, was motion itself. And the pinch wasn’t quite unpleasant; it was simply that it _begged_ \- to be undone and done again. With the cycle well accomplished, you were both sweating. Much.

After a while, he went to kissing you again, smiling all the while. You knew he must have wanted to push harder, faster - but never pressured you to spur him along.

Of course, he did try certain things, once he felt you could handle it.

For example, when he slipped his thumb over your nipple - that made you gasp and sent your hand flying to cover your mouth.

“No,” he hissed like a proud god of war. “Let go! You must sing!”

Gods, he was embarrassing. But not nearly as embarrassing as the sounds that leaked through your fingers after he’d commanded you.

He rubbed harder at your chest. “I’m going to move you, my love.” The words, gentle enough...but his voice dripping with something primal.

He brought his hands to your thighs and pulled so that you were flat against the bed, your legs bent around his waist. Then, he braced one arm at your sternum and started driving himself in like a demon.

It hurt, it hurt, it hurt until - _it didn’t_.

You were a one-warrior choir.

The louder you moaned, the lower the hand he’d braced himself with floated down your body. Soon, he caught you by your most sensitive part and started rubbing with the patience his hips had long abandoned. How he could manage both speeds, you had no idea. But your mind hadn’t much time to ponder before it realized just how powerful the combination was.

Getting fucked and stroked - you would not forget that truly decadent experience.

“Haurchefant!” Time to panic. “I’ll - I’ll come!”

“You’d better! I’m working very hard.”

“Work harder still!”

“So...so demanding, my love is.” Keeping one hand at your center, he used the other to come forward and balance with his chest to yours. The leverage he abused to push you closer was a crime against nature. The sounds of your union made your skin feel too thick around your body. The pressure built in your ankles, in your knees, in your long-arched back. “I will do everything in my power to - “

Your body, wrought with tension, buckled that instant. Your knees came inwards and knocked against him in time with the contract-release tempo of your inner muscles. And you _released_ onto him. You couldn’t control it. The covers, long damp with sweat, now soiled with your fluids, too.

“Ahh…” He sighed and furrowed his brow. “I can feel it.”

Of course, even as you writhed in pleasure he kept at it in a frenzy. Lips pressed to your skin, he begged:

“May I?”

This fool...did he truly expect you capable of furnishing a proper answer?

What’s more, should he not have known you would accede?

You mustered two quick responses: “Wantyou,” came first. Then: “do-it.”

He inhaled once and held it while he led his cock in and out - you, far past the point of reason, pulsing around him with your fingers curled in savage rapture.

When you heard him next breathe, you knew you would soon feel his warmth inside you. For the first of many times.

One final drive into your body - 

“_Gods…_”

\- and he was holding himself flush against you, his brows marred by release. You shook with each wave that pumped into you. It felt golden. It felt like he was fixing something critical about your soul. It made you burst all over again, laughing in love, so in love, with the man who sought to fill you.

Of course, you cried something far less sophisticated out in the moment.

And then you were breathing, both of you. The fire snickered in your ears from across the room, but you cared not. Somewhere else in the camp, knights had likely woken from strange dreams and thought to check the barracks for banshees or apparitions.

But you, with your lover panting over you, you two still locked together like it’d always been and was made to be so - you were warm. And you were safe. And you were brimming with bestial _trust_ for the man you had chosen.

“What...what now?” you said.

He looked up. “Now, I kiss you.” He chose your forehead.

“And now what?”

“Now I swear myself to you for eternity.”

You were too tired to roll your eyes. “Haurchefant.”

“Truly. I am not ashamed to admit...there is no task I would shy from doing on your behalf.”

“I should not like to have your honor sullied by my whims.”

“Yours are worthy of sullying me.” He chuckled. “Besides, do you not think me a sinner of my own right?”

He acted as though he would raise himself - and thus pull himself out - but you set your hand on his chest. “Wait,” you said. “I have only one whim...at the moment.”

“My love.”

“Let us stay like this...for just a while longer.”

And you did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I FINISHED IT...


	19. wilt - hien - t

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Eighteen - wilt**  
Possible Consequences for a Warrior of Light Upon Besting the Prince of Doma in Martial Combat...or Upon Letting Him Win.  
Many ambiguous WoLs. Hien, obviously. **Teen** and a bit goofy, a bit sad. Based on WoLs of my friends and I, upon the suggestion of writing something about Doma's ruler.

Possible Consequences for a Warrior of Light Upon Besting the Prince of Doma in Martial Combat...or Upon Letting Him Win

**one - **

The Warrior of Light bests the Prince verily.

So verily, the Prince is left sitting on the ground, wide-eyed and eyebrow raised, to wonder whether he’d missed something crucial about the art of war. His partner-in-arms extends a hand and smiles. They say, “You’ll hear none of my secrets, Shun,” and lift him from his lowly spot in the grass.

He stands and rubs his bottom. “Well, now I only care for one. If you feel you could indulge a would-be samurai as myself.”

“Oh?”

“How in the world did you manage that?”

** two - **

The Warrior of Light bests the Prince in a matter of seconds.

The Prince hits the ground without really knowing what had sent him there. The lance? A well-placed kick? An act of the kami?

By the time his eyes are open and he’s able to right himself, the Warrior is trudging away with their weapon already sheathed. They say nothing.

Neither does Hien.

**three - **

The Warrior of Light strategically takes a blow and crumples to the ground, gasping.

The Prince does not believe it. “Oy,” he says, sheathing his blade. The look on his face rests squarely between amusement and playful disgust. “Have I failed to prove myself worthy of a fair fight?”

The Warrior holds their wounded pose for a moment - and then deflates into laughter. “I thought - “ they say through fits “I thought I was better at faking! Forgive me, Lord Hien!”

He shakes his head with his palm at his hilt. “There’s only one way I’ll forgive you, my friend. Give me the tussle I deserve.”

“I just - I just don’t want to hurt your feelings!” The smirking Warrior raises themself from the ground and dusts their trousers.

Hien huffs. “It wounds me _more_ that you think me incapable of handling a solid defeat.”

**four - **

The Warrior of Light strategically takes a blow and crumples to the ground, gasping.

The Prince believes it. He has finally stricken the vaunted Warrior of Light. Breaking his martial stance, he leans forward with wide eyes. “My friend!”

The Warrior grits their teeth to avoid breaking the charade and grasps at their supposed wound. “You...you got me.” Letting fall their weapon, they work to strip their arm of armor and pretend the pressure is just too much, hissing in imagined pain.

Hien grows suspicious. “Are you all right?”

“I’m...I’m fine…”

He sighs and rubs his forehead. “I didn’t hit you, did I?”

**five - **

The Warrior of Light thinks the whole thing is stupid.

Still, when Hien launches himself in a perfect display of Doman technique, the Warrior takes great pleasure in moving aside at the perfect moment. They do this repeatedly, letting the Prince get closer each time.

Hien’s eyes grow wild. This is a partner worth sparring with, tricky as they may be. This is excitement, challenge, glory - everything he has longed for in a single match.

And then the Warrior sidesteps, leaving the Prince to thrust his blade into a gnarly old tree.

He stares dumbly at his beautiful blade splitting bark.

“You can’t assume I’m the only enemy,” the Warrior says, cracking their neck and starting for camp. “No secrets for you.”

**six - **

The Warrior of Light thinks this is a great idea.

Their battle is a dance, a fair display of prowess. They circle one another for what feels like an eternity until the rest of camp comes to watch the spectacle. When they tire, they don’t resort to banter to give them a moment to breathe - they just keep pacing with sweaty smiles on their faces.

And then, like a snake, one of them strikes.

The camp cheers both of them on in equal measure. Everything is fair and everything is brilliant. The Warrior emerges the victor after Hien finally drops to his knees, conceding.

The meal they have that night is the best they’ve had in weeks. The Warrior joins Hien as the others head off to their tents.

“Still aching to hear my secret, then?” the Warrior asks after popping a rice ball into their mouth.

“Hmm.” The Prince smiles. “My understanding was that only should I emerge victorious would you deign to share it.”

“You’ve more than earned it.”

The Warrior tells the Prince something embarrassing.

** seven - **

The Warrior of Light is scared.

Not of Hien, but of secrets.

When they ready their stance and hold their weapon, they are reminded of another they sparred with often. They think of how he’d ready himself, knowing full well he’d never best the Warrior. This man, this prince, now - he stands with the same fool smile, the same knowledge - perhaps the same hunger.

What he wants is a good fight, but with thoughts of Coerthas in their mind, the Warrior isn’t sure they can give it to him.

They are readied, nonetheless.

Hien approaches first, and the Warrior responds with a breath of fight-or-flight in their system, letting too much out at once and pinning him on the ground in a manner of ungraceful seconds.

The Warrior breathes hard and it hurts.

Hien stares up. The night sky is in his eyes. Even the stars are a bad omen.

“Forgive me,” he says. “Are you all right?”

The man pinned on the grounds asks this of the Warrior, so frail is their face.

The Warrior raises their weapon and backs away like prey. “I am...not sure I am ready to talk about...secrets…”


	20. radiant - crystal exarch - e/m

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Nineteen - radiant**  
Crystal Exarch. **Explicit? Mature?** He finds himself aroused by some of ambiguous WoL's qualities...and not the traditional ones...

The sight of you - the _sensation_ of you brimming with tortuous light - it was enough to drive the Exarch mad.

Fear, of course, played the primary role in his descent, but it also spurred other reactions for which he had no precedent. For example, though he had encountered a fair number of frightening things as a youth, he had never once found himself wandering to his quarters half-shaken to the grave and fully intent on rubbing himself ‘til he was seeing stars.

Now, however, shameful as it was, arousal was an unavoidable part of his fear response. When it came to you, anyway.

It started well before the defeat of Hades. There was something about your power, your muscles, when he could see them...a body fighting its own power...a vessel capable of holding a plethora of poisons…and thriving with a seething knife of light at its arteries at all times…

A body that could withstand _that_ was full capable of bleeding the Exarch dry. Not that he wanted that. Not that he thought you wanted that.

But…

When he first started conjuring your image to touch himself, he thought not of entering you, or of you dominating him. That would come later. At first, he thought instead of you in battle. Striking. Casting. _Maiming._ He thought of blood highlighting your eyes and torn clothes and wounds and grime and sweat sticking your hair and to your forehead and -

And when he _came_ \- that’s when he thought of you dealing the final blow - of you besting your enemy. That’s when his eyes rolled back and his back hunched. That’s when he’d let his lips part. He’d finish himself off with his heart beating as fast as his frenzied strokes, images of your bloodlust propelling him further and further into depravity.

Perhaps he felt less like a voyeur if he used images anyone could witness, should they have followed you into battle. Was it less invasive to pleasure himself to the image of a fully-clothed warrior? Was your privacy left better intact if he chose to think of your chest only for its capacity to quell the blasphemed light within?

Thinking about it made his cheeks red. Thinking about it made him want to do it all over again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hrnng...short because I am hoping to finish up the next WWAK chapter soon...I have big plans...and this is not necessarily a part of them


	21. bisect - g'raha tia - g

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** Twenty - bisect**  
Something short and sad about G'raha Tia. **General**. About hiding his identity.

Although he had _been_ the Crystal Exarch for a century, he _stopped_ being G’raha Tia only when the Warrior came to the First. Long had he operated on the assumption that she either would not remember him or, if she did, had never thought much of him in the first place.

When he discovered he may have been deluding himself, he realized he would have to take more desperate measures.

“Then G’raha Tia is…?"

An innocent enough question, half-asked.

But he shuddered nonetheless.

He had lied before...hidden truths…indeed Urianger knew well his whole plan hinged on fair-meaning deception... 

A plan decades in the making. Centuries, if you counted all that had transpired to brand him with his Allagan eyes.

Another beat brought him mere moments from abandoning all of it. He needed something. He needed action. Now came the point at which destiny necessitated he sever himself from himself. To save her and to save everything.

He hoped it would be worth it.

“...I am not familiar with that name. Is there something I should know?”


	22. crunch - aymeric - e

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Twenty-one - crunch**  
Haaaaa...Aymeric. **Explicit**. There's one thing ambiguous female WoL and the Lord Commander _must_ get done before heading into battle.

They were running out of time.

That is why, mere moments from the final call to dispatch the Warrior’s unit to the Ghimlyt Dark, Lord Commander Aymeric was grinding into her with his mouth hanging open.

“Faster,” she said. She was laid out with her belly flat against his temporary desk, a flimsy thing that shifted with his motions. The position was less than ideal for a pair with such a size difference, but there was something dirty about getting fucked over a table that she liked, and her partner was happy to oblige her whims...though he was less like to speak on it.

“Mercy,” he said, his voice all air. “Any moment now someone will come. Please…”

“You’ve yet to finish yourself.” She smiled and looked over her shoulder. Sweat glowed around his pretty, squinting eyes. Sure, he was fucking _her_, but _she_ held his command as surely as he commanded his Temple Knights. “Shall we switch positions?”

He sigh-gasped and slid out so he could flip her. Before he could resume, she popped a few buttons on her shirt and made sure he could see her breasts in full.

He wiped his bangs back, ogling. Sweat kept his hair stuck so she could see his forehead. It was not goodly for a knight to be so strained before battle, but no matter.

He leaned forward and held himself at her entrance. His face just ilms from hers, he begged: “Please...may I?”

“No need to ask permission all over again.” She smiled and hitched her legs around his waist in anticipation. “My _Lord_.”

“Ah…”

The wetness made it easy for her to accept him again. Now, he kissed her and pressed his chest against hers. The weight was delightful, and she loved that most of his body was still covered in his usual regalia, his armor, his cloak. Yet here she was spread nearly bare.

“Someone will come for us,” he said, nipping at her ear.

“Then _we’d_ better come, too, no?” She grabbed his hand and planted it upon her breast. “Unless you’re hoping to give someone a show.”

He grunted, slowing his pace. On some level, he wanted to prolong the pleasure, no matter how wary he pretended to be of unexpected company. The common soldiery was not like to barge into the Lord Commander’s tent unannounced, after all. Few would dare. Surely?

He squeezed her breast, but she wanted more.

“Harder.”

He breathed her name and let his hips speak to hers.

They continued like that for a while, wordlessly listening to lust and forgetting the bustle of warriors outside. Blocking out priorities was simple in a certain state of mind. Some nights she wondered if she'd let herself become lascivious to distract herself from other negative emotions, but tonight it didn't matter.

“I’m close,” Aymeric whispered after a bit.

Then came something they could not quite block out.

“Ser Aymeric?” A man’s voice from outside, somewhere close. “Lord Commander?”

He inhaled and held his breath. The furling of his brows and his teeth upon his lip told the Warrior a few things: one - his mind had already told him to stop.

Two - his mind was not powerful enough to follow through.

Her eyes twinkled. “Keep going. Don’t answer.”

Aymeric was gasping. “He’ll...I’ll…”

“Let him.”

The man’s voice sounded again. “My Lord? Are you within?”

The Warrior strained her neck so she could see past the Elezen, straight to the tent’s unremarkable entrance. A split sheet of fabric. Easy enough for a knight to part. The wind had sometimes accomplished the same thing.

“A captain is asking after the Warrior of Light - “

A hand split the fabric and pulled it aside. The Warrior’s eyes widened with excitement.

Aymeric must have picked up on it, but instead of attempting to explain himself, he wore the face of defeat and craned his gaze above, pumping the Warrior all the while. She lost count of his ravenous thrusts, but it took more than a few before he released into her. The warmth set off her own climax, as it always did. This time the priceless look on that soldier’s face made her pleasure even stronger. That was a man who _knew_ what he had seen, but was far too terrified to _ever_ speak on it.

With the Warrior pulsing around him, Aymeric managed a few more ungraceful thrusts before he was truly spent on more than one level. He set his hands aside her head and leaned over her, panting.

“Gods damn you,” he said after the soldier had scurried off. Despite his words, he was smiling.

She returned the expression and set her hand on the back of his head. “To the field, then?”

They kissed to lessen the discomfort of parting.

Once she had dressed, she emerged from the Lord’s tent with nothing to be ashamed of. She sought her comrades out and greeted them with a confident smile, searching their eyes for anything but vigor.

It wasn’t long before she found the soldier who had sought them out and seen them. Yes, she wore a grin for all those headed to the battlefield - but for him she offered also a happy wink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> inspired by a real life situation relayed to me on the internet
> 
> just TAKE IT LIKE A CHAMP...POWER MOVE.


	23. free day - sadu - m

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Twenty-two**  
Okay so I ran out of time to do what I wanted and...now you get to enter the private quarters of Sadu. **Mature**. Ambiguous (shy) WoL.

You had to admit you were a bit intimidated when you stepped inside the tent of the Dotharl’s leader. Bested as she was in combat, Sadu was still a force of nature, and beautiful besides. The whole camp knew what it meant when the two of you returned with sweat-coated faces, when you wordlessly headed to her quarters, looking as grim as the cloud-cast sky.

There were rituals of battle, and there were other rituals.

Her tent wasn’t large. It held a fur cot, a wooden desk, and the accouterments of a Black Mage. Beaded strings hung from different corners of the ceiling, and the scent of spices wafted from deeper within.

“You shy from me now, Warrior?” She sat on the cot cross-legged before you, with her hands locked at her hips. Strong posture, you thought, for someone who’d reached her limit on the battlefield. The tone of her voice communicated the true extent of her exhaustion.

“I’m admiring your quarters,” you said.

“Ha. Warrior though you may be, you are yet an outsider.” Her scowl was deep. “I am not fool enough to ignore judgment.”

You rubbed the back of your neck. “I...I mean it.”

“You and I both know we came here not for idle chatter.”

She was right about that much. You set your weapon aside and knelt before the Xaela. When you hesitated, she shook her head and began removing her vestments piece by piece, setting them to the side until she sat with exactly the same pose - but with bare breasts.

Beautiful breasts, you had to admit.

But you looked away. “Pray,” you said. “Though I fight with the Fury...I am loathe to admit I’m not as experienced in…”

She raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips. For a moment.

As soon as the moment passed, she tilted her head back and cackled. “Bedding? You are _afraid_ to _bed_ me?”

You clenched the fur of the cot in your fists and looked away. It’s not that you didn’t _want_ it. It’s that you wanted to leave battle for the battlefield...and bring something else to her .

She finished laughing and set her elbow on her knee, her head on her wrist. “Surely, a Khagan knows what a Khagan wants.”

The wind rustled her tent, but inside the air was warm and suggestive. You pondered her statement and decided there _was_ something you thought you’d like to do with her - to her tired, tireless body.

You nodded. The corner of her lip twitched upward.

Though it wasn’t your ultimate goal, your hands tested her nipples before trailing to her inner thighs, pressuring until she figured you’d need her to spread her legs a bit farther.

“Oh?” she said. “Growing bolder?”

You cocked your head left and right and kept your eyes on her smallclothes, testing with your finger. “Could you take these off, please?”

She broke into laughter again, though weaker than before. “So timid are you.”

“Well, I’d not like to rip them.”

“And yet they call you Khagan. Very well.” With a haphazard shift, she did as you had asked and crossed her arms again.

You didn’t quite like that, but your prize lay somewhere else, so you could accept missing her breasts for now.

Instead, you turned your attention to what she’d revealed. The sight melted you. The gentlest part of this beautiful woman whose prowess rivaled your own, whose spirit, you thought, surpassed yours. As you had wanted, you brought your mouth forward and kissed from her belly button down, down, down...all the way to her clit, which your thumb had no trouble finding.

“Ah…” she said, softer than you’d ever heard her before. “Then you mean to…?”

You smiled and teased her with your tongue. “What a Khagan wants is to please you.” At that, you used just your mouth at her center, so your hands could cradle her breasts, your thumbs could shift over her nipples. Soon, her back needed something to lean on, her air something to sigh on.

“Hmm,” she said after a while. “It...pleases me indeed.”


	24. parched - thancred - t

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Twenty-three - parched**  
Ambiguous WoL regrets having said some harsh words to Thancred. Strongly implied past WoLxHaurchefant. Alcohol is involved. Continued from prompt two - bargain. **Teen**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written at the suggestion of a certain "Lurkerwithoutaccount" who said my portrayal of Thancred pleased them ( ᐛ )و

_Continued from prompt two - bargain - haurchefant - t._

It wasn’t long before the door to the tavern opened and shut behind you. The lack of audible footsteps told you it was Thancred - but of course it would be him. A few moments later you saw him standing next to you, at the edge of your peripheral vision.

The winds of Kholusia did a little to steel you, to calm the roiling alcohol in your blood. But so did his presence. From the earliest days of your adventuring, he had been at your side - except for those dragon days when he wasn’t.

In your heart, you couldn’t _really_ blame him for what had happened to Haurchefant. And yet you craved something to blame, something tangible and breathing, upon which to heap your sorrows.

You looked at your boots and turned your body towards him. Before you could apologize for your harsh words, he stopped you.

“I am sorry,” he said. His voice was like lead.

Those simple words dizzied you. With watery eyes, you searched his face and found it solemn and true.

“There was more I could have done,” he said. “More signs I could have left. Questions I could have asked, or answered, that may have taken me back to you and our comrades.” He put his hand on your shoulder. Your eyes locked, and you felt that he had _needed_ that to happen before he spoke again. “And when I think on what you lost in my absence...I feel that truth most acutely.”

Looking at him was too much. His visage, coupled with the alcohol you’d already consumed, made your knees weak. By the time you’d decided to call his name, you knew it was asking too much of your body.

“Thancred - “

“Careful there,” he said, catching you under your arms as you stumbled forward. How convenient it was that his shoulder was there when you needed it beneath your head, that the alcohol had given you a fair excuse to embrace him. Because _that’s_ what it became - an embrace. For the first time since _gods knew when_ you sobbed into his shoulder even though you’d long regained your footing.

“It’s not your fault,” you said into his collar. You hoped he had heard.

“I am sorry still.” A voice without falsehoods.

“Some nights...I am so afraid.” You shook your head, still leaning into him. “I’m afraid that I’ll feel this way forever.”

He held you a bit more sternly, but said nothing.

“Or worse.” You swallowed. “That I’ll forget how to feel this way.” You drew back and sniffled, rubbing your eyes. What a drunken fool you were - berating your comrade before unburdening yourself onto his shoulder.

Thancred wasn’t looking at you like that, though. Instead, he pursed his lips. “Perhaps...tis not my place to offer anything with the rhythm of sage advice,” he said. “But in my experience, if something about it doesn’t hurt...then it’s probably not good for you.”

Hand half hiding your face, you paused and considered his words. “I think…” you said. “I think that might be bad advice.” You exhaled into a shaky, drunken smile.

“You are probably right.” He looked to the sky and clapped his hand on your back. “Oh, but at least you’re still sharp enough to know it. Shall we away, then?” So easy was it for him to pretend you hadn't dragged his name in the dirt not half a quarter bell earlier.

“You mean...back inside?”

“Well, if you’d like. Wherever you shall find yourself most comfortable.”

You rubbed your forehead. “You’re downright sober, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely. Tortuously so.” He crossed his arms. “And I’d be a right bastard if I didn’t wake up with an ache half as bad as yours is going to be.”

You laughed once and looked to the ground again. “You knew I would need this…” When he didn’t respond, you turned and took him in for what he was: a clever man with kind eyes and a smile hiding just behind a grim facade. It was all but affirmation. So you smiled, too.

“For that, Thancred, I believe you deserve a drink.”


	25. unctuous - haurchefant - g

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> LMAO I ran out of time, work is a bitch I'm afraid.
> 
> **Twenty-four - unctuous**  
Haurchefant-light. Injured ambiguous WoL learns the master of Camp Dragonhead apparently cares for them a great deal. **General**.

“You’ve got some nerve, trying to do this yourself.”

The chirurgeon was rubbing some kind of salve over your forearm. It burned and you had to look away, fearing the sight of your own burning, mangled flesh. She was a wrinkled old Hyuran woman who looked like she’d seen twice as many battles as you had. You didn’t think she expected you to respond to her scolding, but she ceased her ministrations and prodded further.

“Well? Are you going to ask for help next time?” The wound on your arm chilled like poison when her hands stopped.

“Y-yes. Please, just - “

“It stings, doesn’t it?” She kept at her work, spreading the ointment like she was slopping paint onto a canvas.. Surely she was almost done. You couldn’t take much more. When you had tried dressing your wounds yourself you had been slow, gentle...and apparently wholly ineffective.

The woman went for more ointment. “I know I oughtn’t speak so bitterly,” she said. “But it doesn’t do me good to see my Lord worried half to the grave.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Lord Haurchefant.” Once more, the movement of her oily fingers made you twitch. It felt worse than the original wound had. “He nearly fainted when he heard of your condition.”

“My condition? Tis but a burn.”

“Aye.” You chanced to look at her and saw she’d pursed her lips. Those old grey eyes hinted at a fondness for the master of Camp Dragonhead. You got the strangest sense that she’d seen him grow into a man, spent years watching him from a distance. “My Lord has a sensitive heart, adventurer. Tis like you could have returned with a parchment cut and he’d have sent me all the same.”


	26. trust - estinien & haurchefant - m

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Twenty-five - trust**  
Two short pieces featuring Estinien and Haurchefant (though not at the same time...yet). Both are **mature**. Light bondage/choking...erm...more is planned here...

**Estinien**

One hand between your legs - his other catching you beneath your chin. If indeed anything had been a plea for permission, it was the look in his eyes, and not any words that passed through his lips. Not in those moments, anyhow. Earlier he had told you exactly what to expect of him in bed, and you had nodded with your mouth slightly open. Ready to see how a lance-wielding man could wield _you_.

So when he hesitated, you knew he was giving you a chance to protest, to call out. To answer once more whether you would put your body in his hands. And you _did_ call out:

“Yes!”

His eyelashes fluttered down as he set his gaze upon your entrance - pushing himself in and pushing his hand harder against your throat. How easily his thumb and index found the arteries aside your neck. This is why he had warned you. This sensation, this levity. This reversion.

You gasped at the revelation that you, the Warrior of Light, could be rendered senseless by a single man’s fingers around your neck.

He ebbed you in and out of ecstasy with the careful, expert pressure of his fingers until you nigh melted against the wall and had no choice but to let him hold you just above oblivion.

**Haurchefant**

The blindfold is silky smooth and as cold as a Coerthan windowpane. So enthralled are you by the chill - and so gentle your lover - you hardly notice him tying it at the back of your head, before he lets his fingers rest above your shoulders.

“Do you trust me?” he says, his hands inching towards your collar bone.

“You know I do.” You are small, uncertain of yourself - but certain of your answer.

“If that faith falters…” The hands were gone. “...you need only say the word.”

“I...I shall not say it.”

Where was he? Why wasn’t he touching you? As though you’d be able to see through the black, you turn over your shoulder, then the other. It’s so silly. Nothing has come between you but a single piece of fabric.

He laughs the same laugh he’d offer a polite joke among strangers. A sweet laugh...that had apparently been some indication of debauchery all along. “I’ll need you to hold still a bit longer...my Warrior…”

“Hold still? Where are you?” You feel about the edge of the bed. He can’t be much farther.

“Ah ah - careful.”

A warm hand catches your wrist - and then your other wrist - and then he holds them both above your head. He must be bent over, because he kisses your forehead once. You lean into it, only to lurch forward when he raises himself and starts wrapping your hands together.

You feel vulnerable, your arms bound high above your head. No sign indicates you’ll be able to move them soon. That man...is he tying you to the bedposts? “J...just what are you doing?”

“You said that you trust me.”

“I...I do.”

“Are you going to say the word?”

You stretch more and more. The position sets your back to arching, your neck to craning. Your mouth - to wanting. For some reason, feeling like a fool, you let it open, let it gasp like you have no choice.

“That’s no word _I_ recognize.” Footsteps on the wooden floor. He must have your arms where he wants them. Now, to your ankles.

“I...I won’t say it.”

“Oh?” He has done this before. The tying takes no time at all. It’s the spreading that drives you mad. The covers crease beneath your calves as he slides you wider with the care of a man who knows he could break you. “What will you say instead?”

For now, you breathe through your lips. Everything is cold, cold, _cold_ and it rushes around your naked body like the first time each time. Soon his hands will be upon you. Soon he’ll be around you, inside you.

Your laugh is breathy. “I suppose I’ll say your name.”

A hand grips your inner thigh.

"If...if I'm capable of saying anything at all."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOooooOOOOOooo.....I was going to write more and I probably will in the future. Trust is one of my favorite concepts so like...here's what I have to say about trust/sex in regards to my favorite lads here...
> 
> Estinien - you trust him. He's got experience and doesn't like to talk if he doesn't have to, and you feel like you can read each other. He lets you know what to expect ahead of time, so he doesn't have to say as much in the moment.
> 
> Haurchefant - you _definitely_ trust him. And you also read each other well, but he's just so careful, so in love, so he's always going to verbally check at probably every step of the way unless he's messin' with ya.
> 
> Aymeric - he trusts you. He likes to let you take the lead until he's provoked into becoming the aggressor...hohoho...but he also likes to _tell_ you...he doesn't want to risk you ever feeling like you can't proceed.
> 
> G'raha Tia - he absolutely trusts you as well...but he's like...he's less verbal about it...he would let you do almost anything, send him down any road...but like Aymeric I feel he, too, can be prodded into a dominant role...see my other work...hrm...
> 
> ANYWAY I wanna write more about this particular uhhhh concept...
> 
> ALSO side note...if you are going to try choking in real life...for the love of catboys please look into how to do it safely...and communicate with your partner much more beforehand...


	27. slosh - crystal exarch - m

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Twenty-six - slosh**  
Crystal Exarch. **Mature**. I'm going to extend this I just ran out of time!!! Bath scene after ambiguous female WoL comes home from the Empty.

She returned to the Crystal Tower, to the Ocular, to the humble bed they’d established in the Umbilicus, and there she _deflated_.

When the Exarch turned his head to greet her, his ears reared back and his brows went high. Likely, he’d expected to see the glow of victory on her face - not a pile of Warrior melting on the sheets. “My - my love,” he said. “You’re covered in...er, well you’ve got…”

“It’s blood,” she said with her face buried in a pillow. She couldn’t be bothered to move, even if it meant she could breathe easier. With her head down, he could see the red stuff trailing up her arms from a clean line circling just above her elbow. She’d left her gloves to the side of the bed. They were blood-brown as well. It was clear they’d protected her from something, as her hands and forearms were bare.

“Pray forgive me,” she said. “I know I’ve sullied the sheets but…”

“Are you well?”

“Much better than they who tested me, I assure you.” A little smile quirked at her lips, and she shifted to let the weight of her hips roll her over. “But I am...exhausted.”

The Exarch stepped closer and covered his mouth with his crystal hand. Little thoughts scurried like marmots in his head. What was he to do?

“I rode all night from the Empty,” she said. “Thinking I’d be better for it.”

_All night_. He smiled at that, to think such a thing was now possible. Warm was he for the heroic things she had done for Norvrandt, but also for her furthered companionship.

“Though I’m not sure it was worth it,” she kept on. “For myself and my mount…”

He pursed his lips and nodded to himself like he was taking an order. _I shall make it worthwhile_, he thought. “Is there aught I can do?”

“Well...I suspect I’m not long for this realm. At this rate I’ll fade out of consciousness the moment we cease speaking.”

“Allow me to rephrase.” The touch of his hand opened her eyes, and she regarded him with a dreamy stare, still soft, as hard as she pretended to be. “_What_ can I do?”

She smiled like a happy coeurl kitten. “Truth be told...I do not find sleeping half-armored to be particularly comfortable.”

-

Rarely did they use the Tower’s most excessive amenities, but that time he drew the waters in one of its spacious pools, one suited to relaxing perhaps a dozen people...or simply two. The basin glistened aether-blue. As it filled, he smiled and fiddled his thumbs before returning to the Umbilicus to retrieve the Warrior.

She hadn’t moved much, but she did raise herself on the bed upon his entrance. Indeed, the covers reflected some of her struggle - rusty patches suggested the outline of a figure - but that mattered not so long as she kept coming back at all. Sheets could be mended, cleaned, replaced; his lady could not.

With not a little bit of pride, he scooped her in his arms and kissed her forehead. For all her might, she seemed content to let herself be carried all the way there.

He stripped her of her remaining vestments, laying them in a neat pile far from the waters. Before setting her in the pool proper, he scrubbed the worst of it from her body, minding every bruise and future scar he found. She kept a smirk on her face the whole time, not quite embarrassed but perhaps wanting to embarrass him.

“You’re a fine caretaker,” she said while he scrubbed her shoulder.

He didn’t want to stutter, so he hummed in response and let the blush leave his face before speaking. The room's humidity brought an illusion of sweat to the parts of his body he'd managed to keep dry as he worked. “I think it’s time we see you to the water, then."

“And you?”

He blinked. “You mean for me to...join you?”

“Don’t tell me you filled that entire thing for me alone.” She let her eyes close. “You’re not so wholesome as the rest of the Crystarium believes you to be.”

He rubbed his chin. “Hmm. Pray tell...”

“You dirty old man…”

“Says the Warrior who came home half-covered in blood.”

She laughed and held her knees together. “You’ve got some bite yet, I see.”

He looked to the ground. “And you...plenty of places to bite.”

Fate had it that his hand slipped from his chin to his collar, to the clasps of his clothes...and then those clothes ended up somehow folded next to hers...a mystery, really...

Yet the _greatest_ puzzle of them all - how the Exarch came to be fully submerged in that tub with his crystal fingers set at the Warrior's sex, his teeth at her neck.

And the answer - he had decided that, after that long ride home, he would make sure she slept soundly in his arms.


	28. haurchefant - palaver - e

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Twenty-seven - palaver**  
Haurchefant gets away from the palaver of running Camp Dragonhead so he can let off some steam before ambiguous female WoL gets back. **Explicit** if you can't take a hint. He imagines some fantasies, light bondage, and erm...some other things...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haurchefant is down for anything, guys, let's be real. He will lead, he will follow, he will give the good d, and he will take it...it's really only a matter of time before we hit all the bases here, as a community...

Being thought an eccentric had benefits. For one, the Lord of Camp Dragonhead found that poor excuses satisfied many at his command; knights were willing to write off a sudden departure or change in mood as one of Haurchefant’s oddities. _Well, perhaps he’s off to the stables_, or _Could be he means to place another order afore the merchant’s off_. Ah, and sometimes he was. But not this time.

Perhaps a dozen knights surrounded his desk, half-heartedly readying their reports. He had his fingers woven together in front of his mouth.Back and forth went his eyes, searching for anything interesting to hold onto. It was a routine meeting, one in which he rarely learned anything of note. _Certainly_ naught which interested him more than his current preoccupation.

“Milord,” the captain spoke. A perceptive Elezen, a fear years his junior. “We are set to proceed at your notice. Unless aught is amiss?”

Haurchefant looked to the ceiling with his eyebrows quirked, as if he’d heard someone plodding about the roof. “Yes,” he said. “In fact I’ve just begun to feel unwell.” He stood and set his palms against the table. “I believe I shall temporarily defer my responsibilities to you, good knight. Might I trouble you for a summary of what is discussed in my absence?”

The captain nodded, then saluted, with his lips pursed. “It shall be done, my lord. And may you find comfort.”

“I am certain I shall.” He made for the door, trying to stop a smirk from winning his expression. “Have at it, then.”

Haurchefant’s quarters were as he’d left them, so he stoked a fire and closed the blinds, as though to keep the heat from leaking as it built. Of course, he felt perfectly fine. As a knight, he had never been one for shirking his duties, but he hoped to excuse himself this _one_ night because a wealth of distractions had been roiling in his mind for hours, and twas like the unit had little to offer in way of new intelligence. And if they did, he would hear of it soon enough.

But sooner than that - the Warrior would return. And he had _plans_ for what would follow.

Once he’d removed his armor, Haurchefant reclined on his bed and smiled at the ceiling. The man had no stamina problem when it came to lovemaking, but still he hoped to impress his lady. After some experimentation, he had determined twas best to indulge himself before she ever arrived; that way, he could last through two or three cycles of her pleasure before his own ever became an issue.

And he had plenty of fantasies to fuel his habit.

He eased his trousers off and freed himself from his smallclothes. The fire’s heat had reached him, but his own was rushing through his veins as well. In his mind, the dirty memories of past couplings, and visions of the future’s…

As he started stroking, he thought of whether he’d one day convince the Warrior to outfit herself with some _new equipment_ and take him like a man. The image made his muscles tense: she, with her hips flush on his backside, her hand wrapped around and teasing him from the front. Would it please her? _Oh,_ he hoped it would, for it would please him endlessly, as nearly everything between them would.

Perhaps she’d tie his hands or blindfold him to heighten his senses - make each thrust quake throughout his limbs and set his teeth to grinding - but so would he be content to do the same for her.

At a quicker pace now, he considered how he’d like very much to tie _her_ up on that selfsame bed, perhaps her wrists at first, so she could use her legs to lock him at her sex. But soon he’d like to bind her ankles, too, and spread her until her eyes watered sweet tears. Then he could work her until she was begging for release...and at the last moment slip away...leaving her open to much and more of his machinations.

He smiled, imagining the sounds she might make. It was time for some escalation, then.

He thumbed his head, where a bead of liquid had formed, and then went back to stroking. He brought his free hand to pressure the base of his shaft and then lower places. As much as he wanted to come, he wanted to exercise a few more ideas, so he kept himself from rocking his hips to intensify the experience.

What if he held her flush to the windowpane? Would her nipples harden at the chill? Or would the Warrior’s exhibitionist tendencies finally reveal themselves? If he fucked her at the window, would she imagine the way she might look from the street beneath? Would she grow wetter if she thought a passerby might commit the sight of her breasts flat against the glass to please himself later?

What if she liked the idea so much that she came upon the glass?

He had to laugh at himself. By then, his face was red with lust and his hips strained against the bliss they already bore. It wouldn’t be long before he came. How much longer would it be before she arrived?

Perhaps a final scenario would do the trick - 

Breathing through his mouth, he considered how she might react if she were to walk through his door that very instant and see him begetting release. Oh, if she commanded him to finish he’d be _simply delighted_ to obey, to let his heels bore into the bed so he could thrust into his own hand. He thought the splendid twist of her lips would be the last thing he saw before surrendering to rapture and finally letting go.

He turned his head and moaned into the covers, knowing he was close. Even as he stroked, he kept his ears trained for the sound of that doorknob turning, her footsteps down the hall. He held his breath. And came.

His seed landed on the covers - he made a note to tidy before she arrived in earnest - and on his shoulder - which pleased him, for some reason. A tiny bit of pride. With heavy breaths, and a new clarity, he pondered how he would ever make up his mind once she'd arrived. Although he loved coming inside her, so too was he curious to test his aim...

Yes, he would have to evaluate the state of his room all over again. Perhaps fetch some more wood for the fire, pick out clean garments...chance change the sheets? Or perhaps that would be wasteful, considering the nature of his plans for the rest of the evening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <strike>okay so I have a huge thing for self-pleasure and maybe a bit of voyeurism so if you like that uhhhhhhhhhhhh stick around?</strike>
> 
> <strike> _eyes G'raha Tia and his stupid portal_  
</strike>


	29. attune - warrior of light/original characters - g

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Twenty-eight - attune**  
Specific female Auri WoL plus some Miqo'te OCs. Very wholesome. Childhood. First attunement. **General**.

Rather than rushing her off to the docks, Iri’s mothers took her to the center of town without much explanation. Something in the way of _”She’ll need to learn sooner or later”_ and _”She’s seen us do it plenty.”_ Do what, exactly, Iri wasn’t sure - until she realized they were standing before a giant hunk of rotating crystal.

“The time has come for you to learn,” Amy said with her arms crossed. The Miqo’te Scholar was ever the sterner half of the couple. Behind her glasses lay eyes just as severe as her voice, and even her silver hair had a certain gravity to it, as though she possessed the qualities of one who’d seen many more moons: loads of wisdom and far too little patience.

Naturally, Iri turned to look over her other shoulder to Alice - the dedicated Seeker samurai who’d accompanied Amy for gods know how long - who would be more sympathetic to her pleas. Together, they looked like an odd pair; stone-faced healer and bright-eyed samurai. Throw in the adopted Auri daughter and they made quite the trio.

“Aren’t we...traveling back by ship?” Iri said. “Have I misremembered? I thought another captain hired you for the return.”

“Aye.” Amy gave her partner no chance to answer, and perhaps waver. “But what about our next foray into the East? Should you like to brave the seas once more? Or - “

“It’s not so frightening, Iri,” Alice said. “Most find attunement a fairly intuitive process. I’m certain you’ll have no trouble.”

Iri held her head low. It wasn’t that she was _frightened_ \- not of attuning, anyway. It was more the sense of _severance_ \- the implication that, when circumstances aligned, she would perhaps be expected to go her own way, no longer beholden to (and protected by) the travel patterns of her caregivers.

“But I...what if I…” Iri twisted her lips, hoping the perfect excuse would make its way to her if she just bought enough time.

“What if you what?” Amy raised an eyebrow. “Off and leave us in the night? After all we’ve done to keep you from the streets?”

“Huh?”

Amy wore what Iri had to recognize as her best attempt at a sincere expression - which is to say it wouldn’t have looked sincere on anyone else’s face. She held her lips taut and her eyes narrow, the only _hint_ of compassion a slight upward quirk of an eyebrow.

Quite frankly, the sight sent a shiver through Iri’s spine.

“What she means,” Alice said, “is that we want you to be ready when you _do_ someday venture into the world.” She gestured to the aetheryte with one hand, the other habitually at her sword's hilt, even in the middle of the city. “Attuning now...could someday save you an arduous journey.”

Iri looked back at the ornate device. As she stared, she thought she felt a kind of pull, a plea. Nothing _wrong_ or _right_ \- just present.

“Go on,” Alice said. “We are right behind you.”

The Au Ra took a few cautious steps, rubbing the scales of her shoulders. Others bustled by, paying no mind to her approach. What was to her a moment of great significance was to them a daily occurrence. A youngling’s first attunement, an uncertain, shaky reaching of a hand, a blink of light, perhaps....

It was true she had seen her guardians attune many times, and utilize the ability to teleport even more often. But copying the gesture still felt awkward and ugly. Her fingers twitched into a fist and she thought to turn away, to beg for more time. More days.

But as she turned, Amy was crouched at her side. “Try again,” she said, nigh whispering. A gloved hand pressed at her shoulder. “Reach out.”

Iri did. She spread her fingers and tried her best not to shake.

“You may feel a warmth,” Alice said, behind her. “And that’s quite all right.”

“Stop clenching your eyes shut.”

Iri hadn’t realized she _had_ been. When she blinked them open she saw light coiling around her fingers. If not for Amy’’s presence, she may have stepped back in shock, but she held strong and felt the glitter growing, working at her, working to know her.

This light, it wasn’t hostile. It felt not unlike the steadying hand on her shoulder.

Something gave.

“That’s it, then,” Amy said, standing.

“Good job.”

Iri didn’t feel all that different. “That’s...it?”

“That’s it.” The Scholar fixed her glasses and turned to her partner. “And now we’re off.”

Iri searched her hand for any sign or change but saw nothing, save her own nervous fingers. “Off where, exactly?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.” Amy had already started walking.

Alice smiled at her adopted daughter. “What’s important, Iri, is that from now on, you’ll always be able to come back here.”


	30. free day - crystal exarch - e

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Twenty-nine - free day**  
Crystal Exarch. This became **explicit**, but it's really about pain and character growth. Ambiguous female WoL wakes to find her partner already up and troubled by the nature of his own survival.

The Warrior blinks her eyes open, though she’s still but half awake. The light of the First dances through her window onto bits of dust, and she makes of it a certain haze, a mist, like the Pendants exist somewhere outside of time and place. Everything is blue. Everything is so, so quiet.

It must be early. She can already tell her lover has risen, but she suspects he hasn’t traveled far. She considers going back to sleep - rolling over into G’raha’s space and enjoying the ghost-warmth he’d left behind - but when she finds the spot cold, she lowers her brow.

At first she doesn’t catch him in the far corner of the room, standing robeless before the mirror. Likewise, he is oblivious to her awakening. His own body occupies him well enough; his own body and its flaws. No dream or disturbance brought him from the Warrior’s embrace. There had come a point in the early morning where his eyes simply opened, and in his head he found thoughts of _G’raha Tia of the Source_, of young muscle and mismatched eyes.

Gazing at his naked flesh, he tries to decide whether he is proud of having been that man or ashamed to have become somebody else.

The Warrior eyes him through her sleep-haze. If she cocks her head just right she catches his face reflected back at her, ignorant still of her gaze. He looks instead into his own eyes and drags his fingers down his cheeks, lets his left hand catch at the cut of crystal carved into him. And as it catches, his lips tremble.

She shuffles at his pain, not meaning to attract his attention - but his eyes shift to her reflection nonetheless. Before she can speak, he chokes a gasp and collapses to his knees.

“Raha - “

She’s out of bed soon enough, her own legs awake enough to bring her to him.

He hides his face in his hands and grits his teeth. The sudden rush of her body at his back, of the warmth of her arms around his neck only reinforce the idea that she comforts him more than he could ever comfort her. He and his body of crystal. He and his plague of guilt. He and his falsehoods, misfortunes, and fronts. For all his years, he has grown only better at wasting time.

“I...meant not to wake you,” he says.

“You didn’t.” Her voice floats to his ears.

Even in angst, he leans into her, cranes his neck to her embrace. “There is poison in my thinking. Poisoning me.”

“Let me take it from you.”

He sobs once and holds his elbows to keep his arms from shaking. “I would not have you likewise afflicted…”

“Then let me help.” She starts to rub his shoulders, but he twists his crystal arm away and buckles forward until his forehead is mere ilms from the wooden panels of the floor. Surprised, she lets her hands fall away. The muscles of his back surge with his heavy breaths. Only when he has breathed several cycles, does she set her fingers on his shoulder blade. “You are...hurting.”

There’s little he thinks he can do to keep himself from whipping the pace of his breaths to a frenzy. Between gasps, he exclaims something he hadn’t put into words before speaking them aloud:

“I’m so afraid!”

The room, nay the world is quiet, but for the Exarch’s ragged breaths. Not even the Warrior has words for him in those moments.

But she is yet thinking. She has been this same coil of pain and grief and burden. She has bled air onto the floor and gasped. She has rocked herself into exhaustion and sought comfort from the cold earth. She has _needed_ as he needs, but - the cure eludes her.

Getting it out - whatever _it_ was supposed to be - gives him a reprieve. He is able to keep his eyes open and process the wooden knots of the floor before him for a moment. Too soon, the lines warp with the return of his tears. His arms come forward in impulse, and he knows his body wants to hide itself, but she’s got him - she’s got him for better or for worse - she’s got her fingers wrapped around his forearms - 

And she kisses the back of his neck thinking it is what _she_ would have wished for in her darker moments - for affection and companionship.

But he thinks of _fear. My life is ruled by fear even as I lie with the greatest force known to any reflection._

A reflection, as it happens, sits before him.

He raises his head and looks mirroward with eyes now tinged red. Though the Warrior’s eyes are closed, he sees somehow that their faces are not so dissimilar as he once may have thought. Tears have trailed down her cheeks as well, and stress has knit her eyebrows high.

She feels him raise his head and opens one eye. Her lover stares at her through the mirror, and she stares back at him until blush paints her cheeks instead of pain. “Look at us,” she laughs through her tears.

His own laugh dies in his throat. “I…”

“It is far too early to have shed so many tears.”

He swallows and uses the mirror to find her fingers with his own. “I am…”

“Don’t you say you’re sorry.” She presses her face into his back, unapologetically serious. He can feel it on his skin. “The only time you’ll be sorry is if you try to keep your suffering from me again.”

A chill runs through him. “My love...I just...Iam loathe to burden you with anything more than I already have.”

She shakes her head. “No. No burden.”

“I - “

“You are allowed to be afraid. You are allowed to _need_.” She pulls away and forces him to look at her true face instead of her reflection. “So tell me what you need.”

The whole of his body, the strength of the Tower even, can do nothing to stop the surge of emotion that flushes from his chest throughout the rest of his body. He can barely relay his next found truth. “I confess,” he says. “I know not what I need...but what I want is…”

Lips part. Hearts beat. The Warrior looks to the side in prescient bliss. “Take it…”

When he presses his mouth upon hers, he leaves little room for escalation. They twist until he has found his way on top of her. If lust hadn’t riddled his mind, he may have felt ridiculous for crying in one moment and straddling her the next, but his arousal was greater than his inhibition. As they had woken, they lie already naked on the floor, with no robes, armor, or smallclothes to remove. Already they had locked together in one space - now longing for an additional connection.

“Is this all right?” he hisses, drawing his hand to her slit. “The floor?”

She bites back a moan to answer. “Anywhere. Here, now.” She winces as he pushes a finger inside. “Take me. Take me all.”

The idea was to warm her up, but as her hands find his member he grows increasingly impatient - increasingly willing to be as impolite as she - but he holds back until he can slot another finger in her heat and press at an angle he knows will weaken her vitality.

“Ah! Raha!”

He fingers her and leans so he can feel her nipples on his chest. She loves the kiss of crystal on her, inside her. What he curses, she relishes and craves. She arches her back to get more of it, and more of him.

When he withholds a few motions longer, she bites his tongue, and he pulls away gasping and red hot. “Very well,” he says. “If...if you insist.”

“I do.” She’s melting beneath him, begging him to bring her back together. “I do, Raha.”

He feels his lower lip tremble. There is so much power in fear. So much ambiguity. So much that drives and resists, propels and prevents. Fear wages and wins wars, makes martyrs and cowards alike.

G’raha sets his forehead upon her neck and pushes himself inside, inhaling sharply. When he can go no farther, he breathes out into her hair.

“Gods…”

“My...Warrior…”

And when he starts to move, she twitches her hips up. It’s always that first push that frenzies. From now on, she knows she will fight only for pleasure: her own and his. She can see his tail lashing and stiffening with his thrusts. Though she can’t quite reach its base, she knows she can please him just as well by rubbing either of his ears.

He groans when she reaches the tip and pauses so he doesn’t embarrass himself. “Do you want me to - to touch you?” he says.

“Should it...please you…”

“It would…” He raises himself on his right arm and sets his left at her clit, but she pushes it away.

“The other is not lesser.”

He looks to the side, face as red as his hair, and readjusts so his clumsy crystal fingers can rub at her center.

“Just...like that…”

The words…_excite_ him...

Deeply he moves, hoping he can survive another wave each time. When she squirms at his touch, he feels release building, and each time it grows too strong, he looks away so the sight of her lustful form beneath him begets not an early climax.

Soon, she gets tired of him trying to delay the inevitable. As long as she’d like to have him inside her, she is _ravenous_ and knows he’s holding back. She wraps one arm and one leg around him, forcing him down onto one elbow. Knowing he wants to mark her, she shifts her head to press against her shoulder.

The idea that she wants his teeth on her skin makes his eyes water. The last of his courtesy is gone. Muscle memory propels his crystal fingers to work, but he can no longer focus on anything but chasing the thrust that will send him over the edge.

She’s pulsing by the time he clamps down on her neck, hoping the rhythm of her orgasm will intensify his. He holds and holds and _holds_ her with his teeth until his tongue lolls onto her skin to the tune of a savage groan. Even after she’s certain he’s pumped as much seed into her as either of them can manage, he continues thrusting until his grunts become whimpers and he lets fall his body onto her chest.

Time has passed since the blue morning that brought them together, awakened.

The sun shines into the room and hits the mirror so it half-lights their connected, sweat-covered bodies. But neither of them sees. They have closed their eyes. Anything they could think of saying has already been said - or is instead already known through the heat they share. The sun they make between themselves.

But eventually, _he_ is the one to rise, only to kiss her forehead and brush the wet hairs from her face. He smiles, for he knows through her he can become someone new, not quite G’raha nor Exarch. Something better. Something that can follow her forever, or as long as she’d have him. This is the weight he will bear, the one to keep him burning himself away. From burning her away. From _burning_.

He closes his eyes.

“I love you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know guys, all I can say is @_@
> 
> You ever like, project? You guys ever try projecting? Hrnnnh...


	31. darkness - haurchefant - g

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **T-t-thirty - darkness**  
Haurchefant has a conversation with the Warrior of Darkness. It's very one-sided.

“In a land very far from here, some call me the Warrior of Darkness.”

She had set her gaze to the distance, not towards him. Perhaps a moon or two had passed since her last visit, but already she’d chosen another mail for herself. It didn’t look like any he’d seen before, not in Coerthas or elsewhere. Perhaps it was a glimpse into the “land very far from here” of which she spoke. Regardless of its origin, he smiled regarding how well it suited her.

“I find it strange that both this star and the next should choose such conflicting monikers,” she said, almost turning over her shoulder. He could see the beginnings of a smile at her profile, but the look didn’t last. “I much prefer the things _you_ have called me...though...perhaps tis best we keep those to ourselves.”

Wind whistled over the cliff side. Even with an overcast sky, the white was enough to drive outsiders snow-blind. These days, their conversations were not nearly so playful as once they had been. He used to take great pleasure in teasing her - and getting put in his place - but now he was content to listen, to let her words pulse through him like aether currents.

“I should say…” The wind blew the sound of her voice to him. “I wonder sometimes if you aren’t listening to me...the way you heard my prayers on the Steps of Faith…”

He remembered.

“Truth is...you are the only one I pray to now…”

The words shook her from her knees up. Levin sent her hands to her face and he wished _desperately_ it could be so easy for him to reach out and touch her again. How simple it once was to cradle, catch, and comfort. Though she called his name, he felt sick at being with her and being unable to _be with her_. Still, he would not leave.

“I...I think often of you. Nay, constantly. Sometimes I am half convinced you are yet at my side.”

_I am. I am._

“But...I should not like to keep you from finding somewhere better.”

He willed his spirit forward from the stone. In his state, knowing _anything_ could be hard, and there were days he struggled to remember even his own name. But one thing he knew for certain: there was no place better than a place she deigned to visit.

The Warrior wiped her tears and went about adjusting her armor, as though the cold could have shifted it out of place. When she turned to retrieve her lance, she froze and looked dead ahead - through him. Through Haurchefant.

And though he could never be certain what she saw in that moment, he made certain he was smiling. Just in case.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm I need help
> 
> boys, it's done...and so am I...this is the first month of my life I have ever written fan fiction and well it seems as though it has killed me. thank you for welcoming me into this community unrguhng I'm so emotional, help

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you dearly for reading.
> 
> I made an account in late August and hardly know the etiquette around here so please let me know if I have made a blunder somewhere! And if you'd like to see any person in particular show up in the next prompt - let me know!


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